Not an Alien

There are people who wonder
If we are alone in the universe.

I stand here on a beach
with soft sand under my feet,
salt air pushing on my face,
water folding itself like sourdough
again and again and again.
Time means nothing. Go on.

Light arrives from a star.
It left eight minutes ago,
touching this wave,
touching this sand,
touching my hand.

The warmth is just right.

The goldiloch zone.
The air moves.
It's just the ocean breathing?

If this is the universe,
Then I am no foreigner.

I am a resident.

My address:
Third Rock from the Sun.

Kind of like a Texas farm road.

I see no aliens yet.
If there were,
Would they even fit?

If somewhere else

there is another universe,
and it has no beach like this,
no water chasing the moon,
no sunlight of six-thousand kelvin
warming a wandering soul—

then perhaps that place
would think me the alien.

But here,
in this small corner of everything,

I am home?