Pale children in purple bathing suits,
Siblings, I’m sure,
Carve angry faces in the sand
And the elder spits slowly upon the younger’s creation.
Closer to the surf, Little Leo cuts his foot on a shattered seashell. The tide stings his wound. He does not cry out, only winces.
A bright jet roars over and nobody hears that Leo is not crying.
Sue pulls down her shades as the sun glints off the refinery walls.
A former footballer, I’ll call him Henry, is sucking in his disobedient belly, remembering the man he once was and imagining that he remains that man.

Is Sue watching Henry?
Henry would like to be seen.
Sue is not watching.
Nor is Big Beverly, who chars beneath a two-oh-six sun,
Dreaming,
One presumes,
Of igloos.
All this I pretend to know
On a lonely windless afternoon,
When I’ve forgotten to bring a book, and
God’s in his heaven, and
Everything is delightfully
Not right with the world.

– Greg Blake Miller, August 6, 1998