The punctuation hike

the ellipsis was his unfinished morse code plea;
an S with no-O-S.

the dollar sign was a snake
slain by his bike
blinker-hot under an asterisk sun.

the ampersand was the track of his metal detecting mission;
commas, his footsteps sidling a dune,
until, hyphen-eyed, he obliqued forward, held under the bracketed moon
and tumbled, blue-ward,
into the underscored ocean -

and bobbed like a Euro: two arms
outstretched across
an evening C.