On Crabapple Beach

Before Crabapple Beach rolls over
in its sleep to dream
of summer people
who’ll desert it again,
I scoop up the sand inside the arches
of my feet and wander
under the rising moon,
unafraid of the beach bums,
the cool water,
or anything else except
drowning
in the ocean between
me and the world.

Accordingly, I peek
for clues of life inside
well-lighted beach-house windows:
soup steaming on a stove,
white flowers in a coffee mug,
two lovers in an embrace,
slender volumes of verse
on a windowsill,
promising an eternity of simple joys
to souls with private pains.

And I recall a delicate moment
when, on a late autumn night,
on Crabapple Beach,
a little girl penned her first line of poetry,
her first newscast to the world,
with a sigh, as if saying, “I do,”
to a lifelong marriage
of clumsily scribbled words from her spirit,
and she felt the earth move
under her feet,
before overnight-gusts barreled through,
inserting icicles inside the sand.