Rounding a bend on a Saturday night
my little car cresting a coastal hill
descending deep into the darkened spleen
of a moonlit cove that I've slid past,
forgotten, so many times before

my mind honed homeward
noticing not the night-swallowed sand
dark and itching as a knitting wound,
not the well-worn beach now erased, only
the licking waves lit white in the moonlight

when suddenly – fireworks!
sparkling up from the void
bursting from the blackened beach
a crackling trail of starlight blooms
into popping fronds of light

then whispers into wisps of smoke
– and then another!
anemone of red and gold
shoots and shouts above the beach,
again and again they burst and blow

and never do I see or know
the lighter of that late-night fuse
the sender-up of firelight.
And the sparking of that sparkling night
was so much sweeter to my eyes

because I didn't expect to spy
that break of beauty rising there,
and this is what beauty is, I think,
what clips my mind in dark surprise
the light I don't expect to find:

the purple thistle astride a trail;
slapping the sea, a whale's tail;
tiny fingernails.
Always there are popping fronds of light.
I must crack my eyes to be surprised.

© by Ryan Warren.
Used with the author’s permission.