30/30 Day 4: On the Fourth

We discuss favorite words
after a smoke on the shore
of Lake Michigan, sailboats
numerous as teeth. Synopsis,
cathartic, vermillion, precipice,
vitalitous––this last one not
truly a word, but a better creation
to describe something's living,
the lush forest which walls
the beach, counterpart to the thousand
dead fingerling fish washed up
on the rocky transition between
sand and what I keep mistakenly
calling the sea.