The bay lets me in, doesn’t dispute
anger.  I float on my back, feel small
jellyfish undulating all around me, so many
I am suspended in their bodies. 

The sky is porcelain, a plate never dropped,
the blue from a pristine paintbox.  It’s shallow
here, so I let myself sink to the soft sand
on the bottom, face, hair and shoulders

sun-gilded, the rest of me only suggested
by shadow.  That’s how I’d like to see
myself, as disembodied, incapable
of washing any more dishes, of picking

playdough off the carpet, of doing
much of anything except this.  For an hour,
only I know how I am joined together.
I float in that heaven, this water.

Robin Pelzman

Robin Pelzman’s poems have appeared in The Antigonish Review, Salamander, and The Comstock Review, among others; her poem, “Lunar Eclipse, Obscured by Snow” won 2nd prize in the 2004 Friends of Acadia Poetry Prize Competition.   Her work appears in the anthology, Mercy of Tides: Poems for a Beach House, from Salt Marsh Pottery Press.  She lives in Brookline, Massachusetts with her husband and son.