---
title: The sea and the beach
genre: verse

project:
    title: Autocento of the breakfast table
    css: autocento
...

Waiting for a reading to start \
when there's nobody coming anyway \
is like waiting [for the tide][] \
to make some meaning of the beach.

The sea doesn't know or care \
what the beach even is, let alone \
its cares or its troubles, its \
little nagging under-the-skin annoyances \
[that make the beach the beach][].

Sandworms, for example, or those crabs \
with big pincers on one side \
but not the other.  Those really get \
the beach's gander up, but the sea \
doesn't care.  The sea

only wants to [caress][] the beach \
with its [soft arms][], to tell the beach \
how much it's loved by the sea, \
that complex of water, salt, and \
the moon's gravity, the mercury \
rising up and down slowly, like a [yawn][].

The sea only cares about itself.  \
The beach lays there and takes it.

[for the tide]: cold-wind.html
[that make the beach the beach]: real-writer.html
[caress]: plant.html
[soft arms]: something-simple.html
[yawn]: serengeti.html