The sea on its shore, for example,
especially near high tide,
and the plain green pennants by the lifeguards’
scantily painted wooden chairs, poles posted
in pairs, like rhymes. SWIM BETWEEN FLAGS.
It’s a safety thing
and therefore easily disregarded,
like the fox heads, tiger swallowtail
wings, horses’ teeth, antennae and paws
in the clouds that convene or loom just below the far fence,
the fence that keeps the dunes
from spilling and falling apart all over the gentler
roads and beach-roses
below the actual beach. It is as if
they had something to learn, but something that no
human being can teach:
about limits, about the end
of everything visible, maybe, or about
the makeup of imaginary air.
Meanwhile there
are the distant preteen waders,
the scribble and froth of shallows,
the competition or hidden cooperation
recorded in the tracks of hungry gulls,
where everything
means something, but never for long,
and the clouds and the absence of clouds are both
clichés, like countable sheep
about to be shorn,
or only temporarily forlorn.