Sunset Beach

Salt winds lift and toss the drape
airy and light in the sun room…

They descend from Camden,
these in-laws, tense sibling rivals
to simmer at our cape cottage.
Ladies in the kitchen, men to the den!

The Phillies’ late season swoon,
job jabber, mortgage chatter,
merits matched, trumped or dismissed
resentment restrained by manners,
somewhat.
Ceaseless static, grind and grate
in a quiet corner, unnoticed I wait
smile and nod, drift away…

I find a gap, slip out the back
flee on my Raleigh ten-speed,
spin fast away in guilty glee.

It’s just a short jaunt.
The Anchor Inn
tempts with a frosted mug
and ice sliver foam,
but it can wait another day.
Always, I long look the witch house,
tall and shuttered, odd gable peaks
with dozens of scattered cats
on the porch, lawn, and roof,
sly slinky droops in repose.

Sunset Beach,
mystic place where the world twists round,
the sun somehow sets in an eastern sea.
I wriggle my toes in warm grains
(may my grave welcome so warmly)
fiddler crab skitters from his low tide burrow.

The Atlantis,
this concrete ship (you read right)
torn from her moorings in the 26 storm
broken and sunken in shallows,
her bow jagged and jutting in choppy sea
spray propelled in an endless thrashing.
How her sight sends a shiver,
some system connection
beyond the meaning of words.

Such simple contentment,
too soon, the place proves its namesake.
In twilight, I pedal home
rehearse explanations
in case my absence has mattered.




Note: The Atlantis was a concrete ship built in World War I during a steel shortage. She was soon deemed too slow, decommissioned, and moored, but she broke loose in a storm on June 8th, 1926, and sunk in the shallows off Cape May Point.