1/28/04

An older man with a rucksack of clothes
tried to strike up conversation with girls—
The sand castles were monolithic blocks
With moats and parapets of buckets,
the couples occasional visitors. The breeze
Toppled umbrellas, gimcrack regimes.
Their tendons snapped, they fluttered.
Two girls tried to avoid the old man
Who looked as if he’d brought all his belongings
In the leather rucksack soaked in salt water.
They avoided him by entering the water.
Abandoned, he moved toward the rocks,
near a level formation where the beach ended.
Elsewhere people frolicked, took photographs,
Picked up polished stones if they weren’t too tiny
Or ground into pebbles or less than that,
Attached themselves to the familiar by spiking
their umbrella poles into slicker sand.