Poem: August 15, 2019

Background Check

There is a woman in a yellow bathing suit
in the background of a photograph I took

of the kids in 2004, while they splashed
in the waves, their four and seven year

old faces surrounded by sparkling water
droplets and foam, frozen in the moment

they were flung by the churning engine of
the gulf tide, and you can see how happy

they are, Annie in her floral print one-
piece, Riley with the scar on his cheek

pulled into his smile, and all the while
the woman in the background wades out

toward the horizon, her arms down and
her fingers splayed to touch the tops of

the incoming waves. She's no one we know,
a woman unnoticed in the instant I snapped

the picture, and easily removed with two
clicks in Photoshop, but I leave her there

since she appears happy in that place, in
that rescued second, everyone deserves

these moments, so I give this to her as
a gift. We only have so many places

we wish we could walk back into, we only
have so many waves we get to touch.