Squat concrete turret
furnished with slick pebbles
white-splatted by gulls.
Damp, fusty crests of sand;
bolts the size of a palm, rusted.

View: gold-spangled ocean, buoy-bells
ting-tinging.
Toylike twinengines trail
ads for lotion.
Tourists dowse for quarters, sift pink cockleshells.

After a day swinging horseshoe crabs—
tideline helmets—
the boys grab dinner—doughnuts, butts,
palate-clearing whiffs
of paint-thinner—
then crouch in the rough walls
and test their echoes.

Lost boys, don't bivouac here.
Gauge your luck, in the lighthouse-glare,
and go:

your open eyes aren't freckled with Omaha sand;
you're not the great-uncle bobbing spreadeagled at Juno.











From Poetry Magazine, Vol. 187, no. 1, October 2005. Used with permission.