The families had already gathered themselves
and gone over the dunes towards the town,
with its bands and jugglers and fireworks.
The beach was abandoned to lovers, picking
their muffled way by starlight. By matchlight
the iron-worm could barely be segmented
by the untrained eye. Purple, blue, black,
blue, purple with an underthread of crimson
that appeared and disappeared like a heartbeat.
-Touch it, she said, slide the tips of your nails
along it … you’d think something so pure
couldn’t be shifted … but if you wait
it’ll begin to tremble like a flower at dawn.
……………………..
A scattering of sand grains in the dip of a girl’s
back. Less than a thimbleful, more than a pinch.
Illustrative of Poppyfield Battle or its aftermath.
Startled and bored, she rolled over of her own accord.
Her lover played mildly with her body, sliding
a storm-whorled seashell to reconnoiter her ever-
ticklish navel, hummed a monotone to indicate
his thoughts were lightweight but worth a perky
listen: that the near-nude female form
is an anticlinal structure, sherpaed by the
mental traffic of the covetous, that … -Who
else is looking? she asked, as a constellation
burst overhead its nipple-spurt of blue cinders.