Writers, Artists, and Poets of Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Poetry

There are no shells on the beach.
The children have taken them all.

Watch them come and go at lightning speed.
See them explode running from vans, RVs,

cars of every description, school buses
proclaiming public or private origins

in block letters on gauche yellow sides.
Screaming children whose banshee clamor

startles the flight of wheeling gulls
into broken circles and torn ellipses.

Small children whose eyes glitter with
the greed of their chance acquisitions

and whose mouths are often pursed in
an arrogant and self-serving assurance

of their own supremacy in the universe.
The adults in their charge follow slowly,

Incapable of damping the vicious avidity
of their progeny or of prying bright booty

from the clasp of sharp and tiny fists,
their distended bodies collapse and sink

by infinitesimal degrees into the sand.
Overcome by heat and a lethargy induced

by their blind and constant procreation,
they survive for the next generation.

At dusk a lone beachcomber makes his way
down the trampled and deserted shoreline,

a sloppy hat perched on his weathered brow.
His shell collection is far from complete

and there is no hope of completing it now.
All he unearths are a few shattered remnants,

notable only for how their grained interiors
can sometimes shine with muted intensity

in the swiftly failing horizontal light.
Tomorrow he vows to rise at first dawn,

to begin his trek before the onslaught,
to claim rare finds fresh from the brine.

But in truth he is a family man himself,
long beleaguered by children of his own.

There will be no time for singular pursuits
before the day and its shells are gone.