Norderney Nerves

Visit Norderney...sooner...for the storms that batter this island are constantly reshaping the landscape.

— traveler.com.au

Bring a windbreaker.The cool breeze tinted by iodine intensifies

cold sand on your soles until the breaking raysblind and burn the glare off a porcelain shoulder

– take care –

it is as fragile as the rainbow mussels’ shardspiercing tender feet oblivious to their luminescence.

Low sweeps and mourning shrieks of gullsdraw the eye to a washed-up Tern stranded

on the basalt Buhne headless, and to a misty whitethat disappears where obsidian rolls out choppy.

This is neap tide when pulls of celestial bodieswork against each other. Seagulls tossed

in reverse-glides upward, resign to new aims;sand, like blizzard ice, pelts skin, chafes;

and grass whips chaste flesh, smarting, drawing blood.Inky black spills into the milky turmoil of white caps

like salt abrading my lips as we dash behindsaddened glass that pleads to come inside too

– knocking      – pounding      - whining.

An enveloping dome of charcoal-blue frames flagsheld back by violent boyfriends they cannot escape

no matter how fast they run. And the blusterabruptly stops with the warm return of Sun.

I brought you to the sea today to calm our nervesdidn’t consider the island weather’s temperament.