Love and sand, the mantra and the ocean

 
The first thing I remember
is sand in the cracks of the streets.
Short bright shore grass growing out of it,
we learned in school that it and its roots were so short
because it was lodged in sand and somehow knew it,
as transient as our summer fling and the handful of others
we’d had but never talked about because this one meant something.
We’d walk along Main, praising ourselves like hipster monks
for denying ourselves the universal rush to the beach,
the beach the shoobies called it! The beach was the only thing
they knew.
                   We knew the shore was a place, a thing, an area,
a personal spot away from the tourists, licking soft serve
off our hands as it melted in the heat, creamy cold and sweet a
counterpoint to the heat and gritty salt, laughing to ourselves
over something only we knew, over nothing,
over us and the summer and the shore.
It was a way of life. We’d wander down Cookman
with the dusty sand in our flip flops
that comes from a million tires grinding it into powder on the blacktop.
It gets everywhere, and it’d drive you insane if you let it.
The shoobies let it.
                                We let the walk down the cracked street
cover us in fine powder sand, getting between our toes,
covering our legs, in the cracks of our elbows. It was the enemy
if you let it. We loved it, our dusty badge of honor. Shore kids.
A way of life, a personal mantra. Arms around each other’s backs
watching the sun go down from the lifeguard stand. Soft kisses,
gentle writhing on the white sun-bleached and sea-weathered wood,
soothingly warm from the day. It all meant something, the gravitas,
and we knew it, and held our own, and held each other up
to the low, primal lullaby of the ocean.
                                                            And so on, and so forth.
The beach is a field trip, a peek into the lives of a foreign land
without a glimpse of the culture for context.
The shore is that land and that culture. We’d wake the next day,
meet on Main, meander down Cookman. Wander down Ocean Ave,
instinctively knowing every inch of the warped boards with their
jagged nails, the dunes pushed up high in planned chaos,
insurmountable mountains, just as transient as all else here.
We laughed at the tourists shaking sand out of their shirts,
not knowing what to do. Shook our heads at the callousness
of paper cups in the sand, damn shoobies. Strolled from one end
of the boardwalk to the other, the old casino pier marking our start
and the convention hall the turning point, never a rush,
that was the fundament of the shore. Our own little paradise,
always acutely aware we had it the best of all,
we’d wander at our leisure until we grew tired,
then clamber into a lifeguard chair and watch the sun set.

We’d split up at summer’s wane, promise to keep in touch
and promptly forget, then hibernate with the rest of the shore
until the summer rolled around again. Transient paradise,
we’d meet someone else and live each night again.
It meant something, and we knew it, and we
defended it with all our hearts, as we gave our hearts to each other
with the fervor that comes with knowing it’d end in September.
The shore was a place, an area, a way of life, a code, a set of morals,
a transient paradise and a place where life made permanent sense.
     


                **
In memory of the shore towns devastated,
the generations of memories forever unrevisitable,
the rebuilding effort which will create memories for the younger generations,
and the gap between those which will exist for the next hundred years,
until the last soul full of memories of the old places is laid to rest,
to guard over the places which are ghosts themselves.

                **