3 March 2019

By Philip Kuepper

A dribble of skiffs
were pitched by the surf,
everywhichway,
until, one by one,
they were landed safely
by the young sailors, giggling,
with delight.

The surf frothed.
The beach seethed
with the retreating tide.
A lab tested the water,
biting happily at the foam,
as the children lugged their skiffs
among tufts of dune grass.

They quit the beach,
the lab racing after them.
Then, all became Nature, again,
at its elemental best, the thrusting
ocean, the receptive shore,
the passive sky as witness, the hissing
grass the chorus.

Here was a play
more ancient than the Greeks,
a play stripped bare of artifice,
the deus ex machina obsolete,
what with the sun in one’s face,
and Poseidon roaring
with laughter?  Or were those tears?

(1 March 2019)