Simon Leonard
Out of Breath
Castro Urdiales, August 2020
We hoped for August the way you hope for a cure —
prayer we never got around to voicing.
From this bridge
between what was a fortress
and what is not quite a church,
now a lighthouse collecting spray,
in a normal summer, bronze daggers trust
into thrusting water,
burnished arms stretch roaring
to a buoy, at the end of air.
Treading tides
against the expanse of ocean, they turn,
to measure themselves
against the vertigo in their lungs,
the depth beneath, the weight within; the certainty
unless their arms and legs keep churning,
the bulk of their bodies will kill them,
back towards gaping sand.
From the bridge, this August,
you can just make out
stripped branches swaying by the shore —
so many unrecited prayers
for when breathing was a given.
—Submitted on 08/21/2020
Simon Leonard teaches secondary school in Germany and has a deep connection to Spain. His work has appeared in Envoi, Orbis, Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Poetry Kit, and other journals.
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