Fireworks in Hainan

From Riyue Bay, Wanning, on the southern Chinese island of Hainan

Fireworks in Hainan

                            There wasn’t much to it,
just a spasm of chemical combustion
on a beachfront, energy of fire turned
to the frequency of red and white,
         whatever our eyes will recognize
         against the ocean’s black.
                                     Someone
                   was responsible, even if
                   there wasn’t much to it, so I leaned
                   over a guardrail to watch
                   three Chinese tourists, especially the oldest,
         a woman with trimmed hair who shook her hands
         to reject the fire, laughing with fear that the energy
         might lift her to unsafe heights.
                                               She giggled the hardest
                   when it was over, as if nothing much was better
                   in this entire world than this beach in this tourist zone
                   on this island where a person could let some sand
                   sift between their toes. Here’s another box, someone
                   shouted from above, passing it down. The woman
                   shook her hands again
         but her daughter and a man
         took the package and turned it around, flipping it
         with pleasure, wanting a little piece of all us to be sent
         skyward as smithereens.
                                                       I watched a bit longer         
                                     until I was sure silence would follow,
                                     and then moved on
                                                        aware for a moment,
                                     maybe the length of a flash of light,
                                                        of how wrong I was:
There is a lot
to life’s simple delights.