Newport Summer Beach
T. Karsten Braatz
There is little poetry at Newport's summer beach (no one notices the dolphins,
grey bullets leap-frogging beyond the breakers) only the happy pandemonium of
crashing waves
clashing colors
and 100 radios
all tuned to different stations
all playing the same song.
No pasture springs
no sleigh bell rings
but a melted rainbow of tanning oils
in ice cream flavors
and everyone's color uncoded underwear. Through it all I run
sidestepping sandpail children
in their naked bliss,
dodging an airborne flotilla of
flying disks
ellipsoids and colored spheres.
I hardly notice
Just tanned arms and ordered breaths
pulling sand-speckled legs
across low tide's packed sand
in a seagull's glide,
a fluid, flowing rhythm in rhyme and meterwith the dolphin dance
the only poetry at the beach.
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