'Aching with salt'

Is nothing real but when I was fifteen,

Going on sixteen, like a corny song?

I see myself so clearly then, and painfully—

Knees bleeding through my usher's uniform

Behind the candy counter in the theater

After a morning's surfing; paddling frantically

To top the brisk outsiders coming to wreck me,

Trundle me clumsily along the beach floor's

Gravel and sand; my knees aching with salt.’’

— From “Groundswell,’’ by Mark Jarman