The sea and the beach

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.