Eclipse

A girl, no, a young woman, lazily walks into the surf,
relaxed as the long afternoon, walks directly toward me—
sun setting behind her in a cloudless pale pink and orange sky
over Galveston fields, weeds, debris, surviving palm trees,
the abandoned, stair-less bathhouse and miles of soft, almost
powdery pale gray sand—she walks away from the landscape
that briefly held her, through the water, eclipsing
the sun, her body in complete silhouette, and I know
that I know the black construction paper stranger
who I emerge out of warm waves into breeze for, know
the new shape of her, for I have watched that form blooming
for thirteen years, have studied the newborn’s dance
in my arms, the girl’s gait as she trots and gallops in the yard, runs
for the school bus in flip flops, walks away from the house,
fingers in shallow jean pockets; I walk toward the woman
she is becoming, everything
and nothing like the girl
she is now—
a grown woman approaches me
until her path veers, just a little in my direction
and light floods the silhouette of her, erases
the woman, reveals the astonishing complexity of angle,
joint, dimension, motion, texture and color of long-waisted curves, solid muscled legs, bony shoulders, loose hair
and too-heavily lined brown eyes
arriving just to say Hi.