Beach Day

 

Beach Day

We unpack the car, set out towels, lawn chairs,
         a wicker basket packed with lunch,
                  the Sunday newspaper. A wind rises,

blows the newspaper along the beach. Ordered
         pages uncompose themselves: world news
                  gusts over the dunes, the metro section

sails out to sea, the business section
         buries itself in spiky grass. Sandpipers
                  race along the shore, and a gray heron

lifts a quizzical head. Unable to retrieve
         the blowing pages, we watch them scudding
                  along the shore, crumpled between hillocks

of dune grass, or twisting like paper sails,
         water blurring dense columns of words;
                  strips of newsprint line sandpiper nests,

make a necklace for the heron's pale throat,
         while fish cavort through invisible latitudes
                  of ocean. Without news, the world loses

complication, and we loiter in ignorance,
         watch white clouds gather, sweeping across
                  the blue sky like new nations arising.