When the wind, cold with sea,
puffed no striped umbrella,
cooled no glisten of sunscreen on a shoulder,
and the sand hadn’t been piled into castle
nor dredged from surf-fed moat,
when, yellow foam crackling,
wave after wave rolled kelp heads and their ropes,
and seagrapes hissed,
when, between washes, sand flea burrows
bubbled open, and, carried over them,
not one gull cut the white with her gray,
when no dog unhooked from leather leash
heaved himself at the frisbee with the chewed edge,
when, brown bottles broken in the coals,
old fires’ only motions in log-hid holes
were the falling-in of new sand,
when, in the dark spaces of dunes
no one turned to touch, and there were grasses
sliding merely against grasses, I
stretched out my arms,
my left ear aching under the wind’s battering,
eyes tearing. I,
the one in stiff cotton standing up,
the one in hard shoes,
open,
the one
chilly, damp, squinting, moved
breath by breath nothing but
white, water, wind, sand
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