Seashore impressions

 

 

Rehoboth umbrellas, sparse but bright,

to left or right, how far I see!

September on the boardwalk.

 

October detectors search the lonely sand;

August coins echo so softly,

I hear the sea speak.

 

Staring from Walt’s Paumanok, then Hart’s Hatteras,

here Henlopen (after the crowds):

oceanic poetics.

 

Wiping out the surfers’ rides,

washing off the suntan oil,

the waves will settle the matter.

 

Mathematical physics:

the waves are only quarks.

In answer they crash.

 

The Washington Post (ten cents more here):

a superpower minisummit,

on an island.

 

Third world novels:

dynasties far to the south,

by the sea.

 

“Going out of business, discounts: suits and salves,”

empty stores announce,

until next summer.

 

(T-shirts write in unread windows

“I survived Hurricane Charley.”

These modern synthetic fabrics!)

 

The tourist paper’s hype:

our restaurants are hip.

Too bad their clients are square.

 

(Persnickety ladies “can’t really taste” the snapper,

they “can do better at home,”

and smoking to lighten the palate!)

 

A boat empowered with tourist cameras,

stalled in the water.

Out of film?

 

e. e. cummings:

we find ourselves here.

The sandcrabs scamper.

 

Seagull shit (and puppies pee),

though fed by others, right on me:

the world is unjust.

 

I pray to Zeus: take up thine aegis!

Black clouds spill rain

into the sea.

 

 

(10/86, Rehoboth Beach;                                                     

revised 3/88, Washington)                                                 

 

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