The Untainted
by Odin Roark

New tide’s blinking
Sending flotsam drifting shoreward
Where water depth changed by oceans’ swallow
Show decaying pylons
Once supporting boardwalk simplicity

Sun worshipers urge summer heat
To darken lathered skin
As abandoned Coppertone bottle
Joins ancient water’s perpetual visits
Of ebb and tide

Gull-feathered patience gliding above
Gazes at innocent children molding sand castles
Where Triscuit-step-paths
Meet up to draw-bridge Wasa crackers
Held secure by breadstick timbers
Cemented with sea weed’s sticky sand

Bronze effigies awash in gull-white convenience
History’s commemorative life lost on tempest waves
Goes unnoticed as it overlooks
The coming and going of storybook sand castles

Adults-in-progress

Such is entitlement’s escape-to-the-sun
Where pleasure-obsessed addiction
Remains ensconced in seaside delusion
Holding to beach days past
When beer-enhanced-love once celebrated
Slipped to Perrier-Jouët pretense

Self-deception
Imbibed
Discarded
Becoming tomorrow’s human jetsam
Drifting aimlessly below
Origin’s forever exhalation
Updrafts of salty air
Seeking untainted conscious life
Somewhere

Anywhere