Golden Rescue

• Leisha McCagh, Grade 11
• Poetry
• 2007

Her tanned silhouette waits patiently on the crowded footprints plastering the sand.
Her sun bleached hair disturbing the view of her well trained eye.
Waiting for her cue…

In a split second she notices a flash of flesh disappear amongst the surge in the army of waves.
She flies like a searing bullet cutting the air and dives into the icy water, slicing it like a knife.
Scanning the horizon, her eyes act as radars as she plunges deeper to the ocean floor and further from the refuge of the coastline.

Her brain is crowded with a million anxieties smothering all rational thoughts. Her limbs ache and her lungs are exhausted as she persists to rival the break in search of an existence, a life at stake.
But like a beacon glowing from the depths of the bitter ocean floor, a glint of gold entwining a defenseless arm.

The bubbles consume her as she strains to reach the endangered life, dormant on the wild tapestry of white, weaved by a million hands.
She blankets the helpless body with her own and propels herself to resurface.

The waves throw her between them like some sort of game, and as she stumbles to shore she struggles with the weight of the young boy without the water’s assistance.
Her body is numb and her tendons strain to carry him through the wake of crushed seashells.

She lifts the boy to the warm sand with her remaining strength and examines his pale, colourless skin as he begins to splutter and slowly reveal his glowing cobalt eyes.
She looks down at the gold bracelet on his left arm, she knows she has rescued him, she has saved his life.