Well Bottom Blues

Black welk fragments and tiny shiny bits just where the surf

defines the tideline, I choose a spit of sand where the beach turns 

and set out. There are no sea birds here among the beach people

but past the tented encampments terns glide and stride on the wet sand as I do. One walks up just above the tideline’s edge to let me pass

on the firm sand, while a mother with two chicks herds them away.

I stop just short of the stand I had set out for respecting

mother tern’s concern, a lordly and isolate satyr upon the beach

which grew larger by my walking to it, empty of tents and chairs,

my back to the houses behind contemplating the placid eternity

in the Gulf, however interrupted by the oil rigs just off shore.

I debate a minute until I pass an abandoned apple core 

then toss my nub of cigar into the sea, not littering but an offering

to Mother Ocean. And damn any Bamas who’d condemn me for it.

I walk past a tumbling couple chasing a sea blue frisbee. 

Babies in floppy hats sit in their mother’s lap at the edge of the surf.

An sun-ripened  older couple parks low chairs a little further in

to wash their legs cool. A toddler in an orange inflatable boat

is towed out to sea by captain dad, while a thin tweenager

in a Baptist-modest trunk suit leaps over the bit of black wrack

which dances back and forth where the smallest curls unfold.

As I return I find an unfamiliar bug or crab creature stranded.

I study it a moment, tucked tight in death or perhaps just locked in

until the tide returns. I toss it into the surf just in case. And then

a perfect half a small black scallop winks at me from hard sand

and I bend to pick it up. I wade out calf deep to wash off the sand

then turn back toward the Crimson Tide tents my sister bought

god only knows why but here we are on the redneck riviera so why not.

I plop in a chair among the distracted folk unaware of this immensity,

larger than any church they have attended, sprawled out before them. 

I drain the warm leavings of a water bottle next to someone’s Sudoku

before I go back and cross the scalding sand in search of cooler water.