A Day at the Beach

Circling for hours in an irritable parade of steel and rubber,

gleaming and sizzling in the midday glare,

our anticipation disintegrates into frustration

amidst backseat whining,

our picnic sandwiches limp,

boiled eggs flaccid and warm,

ice water tepid.

We stealthily stalk,

suburbanites in ambush,

mercilessly pouncing on the vacated spot,

our cherished prey.

The sky, an aggressive blue,

and the white searing sand

meet begrudgingly like strained relatives

at the thin line of resentful, green ocean

as we, beasts of burden,

traipse and lug aluminum chairs, a cheap inflatable shark,

black inner tube, towels, orange plastic buckets and shovels

in stilted, painful gaits over the sandy lumps.

The sharp-beaked tern hovers, dismayed,

over the crowd of rainbow umbrellas

and greased flesh glistening in the violent sun,

enviously considering our grainy sandwiches

gobbled in a dissatisfied furor of heat and impatience.

The lathering of limbs frustrates the child

whose body must join the waves

and then for hours sprint back and forth

in frenzied circles

on the edge of earth and sea,

his delighted head uncovered,

thrillingly balancing on the precipice,

tracing the border

between safety and peril,

the known world and the blue abyss.

After decades of crisscrossed shoreline,

ruined sandcastles and tears,

half-read paragraphs of damp novels,

intrepid port-a-potty ventures,

collected sea shells and bickering sea gulls,

we march back, sluggish,

to the August-cooked car

and wrestle the tantruming child

into the sweltering seat

amidst boiling buckles and humid leather,

and join the flock of traffic on a grey highway,

returning home crusty, sun-wrung, beleaguered.

This is how we occupy ourselves,

how we spend our weekends

in self amusement,

since our sorry Mondays will return

only too soon

to offices and fluorescent lights,

computer screens and conference rooms,

where we dream,

in perpetual longing,

of the seashore.