In the distance: craters.
Then a lava field.
Then a man climbing a mound,
and another, already atop it,
quietly surveying the world.
Keep going in that same direction
and you’ll come across a camera on a tripod,
clicking away to itself,
not far from a road.
Across the road,
a few camper vans, boots wide open.
People slipping out of swimsuits
and into something lighter for the evening.
Then a beach.
Then the ocean.
On that beach, a family caught my eye—
four figures carved in gold,
hair white as sun-bleached rope,
gathered loosely around a van.
The children — a boy and a girl —
ran laughing through the sand,
manes wild with salt,
flying behind them like storm banners.
They bickered like lion cubs,
graceful in ways that seemed frankly unfair.
Beside them, their father moved in slow motion.
His physique was absurd.
A torso and arms straight out of Rodin —
and I’d wager, same weight class.
He radiated density, strength,
balance, peace.
The kind of body that makes you want to sit down
and rethink your life.
As he carefully laid out cutlery for the evening meal,
his wife stood at the boot of the van,
raking the sand with a bit of cardboard.
Planted firm,
she bent and straightened in rhythm,
sending large arcs of sand into the wind,
which turned them into
elegant little ghosts.
I watched all of it for some time
before my gaze, inevitably,
found its way
to the centre of gravity.
The woman had her back to me.
Her backside—
well.
Let’s say it was
resolutely present.
So full, so joyful,
that on the tops of her thighs,
where sunlight had never reached,
two perfect crescent moons shone
in contrast against that golden skin—
revealed, as it happened,
by the gentle urgency of domestic and artistic duties.
I had never seen
a more contented posterior.
Nor, perhaps,
a lovelier family.
I watched them for a long while,
quiet as prayer.
And when I left,
I felt quite restored.
My word.
What a world to live in.
