The husbands have left their wives, and there
is a little girl on the sandbar trying to bend spoons
with her little head. The detritus of the garbage dump
rolls in – used needles, seaweed corpus. Driftwood
used to be the bark of a mangrove, of a ginkgo,
but now it’s just wood. The names, all meaningless,
and such a human thing… The sand is a state park
named after the Father or some lost troubadour. Formerly,
the beach was a military base. Reclamation. No more mines
or submarines. Instead, the metal detectors find
pennies. Alchemic kisses. Forgiveness flattery. But look,
the sun is falling down, the salt and pilgrim crabs ascend
and cross your misshapen toes— Everything heading
to the sea. It’s winter. So get in your car, flash
the headlights over the midnight surf, scaring the trout
into brief flight; the constellations and oil derricks
speaking in morse code to each other, minding those
coyotes with green eyes; and you, keeping witness.