4 August 2024

By Philip Kuepper

Grass fans the beach like lyres
the wind plays;
and a plover pipes
as though Pan
has come shepherding
his herd of mythic goats.
Again, Bacchus has spilled his wine
on the table of the horizon;
the drunken sot ascendent.
I will warn Orpheus
when he arrives to play
on the lyre grass,
in hopes he won’t lose his head
when the G-string bikini clad
“babes” descend in all directions.
The volleyball net is up.
And come night the moon
will act the ball
among star players,
while resident Hippies
will gather driftwood,
teepee it, and set it alight,
and sit round the fire
singing to a guitar’s plucked strings
“Amazing Grace” “Blowin’ in the Wind”,
is my guess, while grass
will perfume mustily the air.
From beyond the dunes hoots an owl.
A wood stands there,
where trees have been felled
to build rough craft for use
close to shore.
There’s a rowboat used
to gain the lighthouse,
round which the base of
fish will gather when migrating.
Fishing is plentiful.
The moon fishes there nights,
when it tires of volleyball.
There is a legend lovers lie there drowned,
if not in love, in water.
The eye of the lighthouse, supposedly,
looked on them as they drowned
in passion, arrested,
by the patrolling waves,
the owl’s hoot going
unheard, unheard,
unheard.

(27 July 2024)