Morning Brine

by Karen Luke Jackson

                                               Yesterday’s breakers

churned jellyfish after jellyfish after gelatinous

jellyfish and slammed them onto beds of crushed shells.

This morning, the sea calm, their globes rest in the sand,

giant pearls strewn from a snapped strand,

some translucent, others dulled, a few stiffening

like rubber cement uncapped in the third grade

when I first learned the word jellyfish, even though

they aren’t fish. No vertebrae.

                                                     Sea Jellies

aquariums now call them. In childhood, I patched

things together with goo from those brown bottles, 

the same shade that now bands these see-through bells

who days ago swam beside right whales, captured prey

with mouth arms, escaped leatherback turtles

and dinner tables in Japan. Their remains

now lunch for screeching seagulls. Pickings

for skittering crabs.

                                  If I borrow the red shovel

from that kid building a castle and heave

a dripping ball back into the sea, like I flung

beached starfish and sand dollars when I believed

a return could save them, the creature would still

die. Minutes out of morning brine ordains

a corpse by nightfall. I want to wave

these bodies away, instead step over

and around so bare soles do not brush

what could still harm

                                          and stop counting

the lumps in the sand, the number of friends

I’ve lost, the days I have remaining. Here,

two jellies dry side by side. Another, alone,

bakes in the sun.