Crap, etc. (6/8/03--11/30/03)

Vanishes in mirages of mirrors this sandy beach,
whose holes fill with sky, flat cloudless ones
that fit no better than the families. Umbrellas
would blow away with the storm, were it not
for sand-dunes. Alas, the coolers in the sky

melt with empty selzer bottles among mounds
of evaporating ice, and the beach blankets,
magic carpets without power, fill with families that fall
to the quotidian of a rim of debris on the sand,
sea-gull feathers, unbraided rope and braided sea-weed.
How hard to rely on things inseparable and solid,

yet already Baby thinks about Christmas.
And what refuses to melt away is snapped apart.
Soon his makeshift potty is an artifact.
Who, while sunning themselves, wants to read
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Part 2:
that’s for dummies! or read about Constantine

greased with sun-block number 45,
or split capitals, the unbroken expanse of orchards
halved and halved-not: this lifeguard lacks jurisdiction
beyond the Do Not Trespass: Private sign.
And there they are, homes stately in the main,

shingles stained or painted. They’ve seen it all,
rounds of crocquet, and dreary afternoon parties.
How flimsy the fences keeping them from people,
rickety, buckling to the whim of each wave.
And before you can get acquainted
they fall apart, and like that, are wheeled away!

But the kids don’t make it better with their shovels
slapping each imperial edifice together, no thought
for tricolor or patois, to be kicked apart impudently
by destroyer Little-Boots, water sluicing the foundations
to take each castle out in tiers, each delicate parapet

molded by a tiny water-cup smashed like cake decoration,
every aquiline nose for every new Octavian
broken before its liberation from the medium--
as when you stare at a splash of semen in
a handkerchief bunched like a rose, and watch

future Hitlers and Einsteins before you flush.
Think of that potential wasted, a no-brainer!
Console yourself that worse could come.
They don’t make castles like they used to, no chains
in the summertime, no moats or black Marias--

The last republic lost in the dissolution of laughter
brings relief, nothing left to defend or fortify,
only mirages on the beach wavering from land at eye level.
Blooms and thorns before the traveler.
This rim of debris will sit on the sand [another millenia]?.