At Holly Beach With You

A thousand cheap vacations
with free seagulls and sunburns
all you can step on beach debris
and the purifying grit of Gulf waters
a working family's paradise spree
population you and me

In a couple hundred cobbled cottages
shambled alongside cramped alleys
with ample crawl space for cars
shacks but for location and personality
Aunt Sally's Sea Side Pelican's Pouch
Imitation Crab Cake Kitchenette By the
Day or Week No Pets Please Wipe Your Feet

There's the sprawling lopside family-owned general store
Asian goods mercantile and cajun-fried deli counter
with overripe produce abandoned even by flies
boiled eggs suspended in time's pungent solution
and even older sausage that could salinate a bathtub
frozen-in-imagination seashell accretion creations
racks of gimme cap signage and road map anthologies
the translucent miracle of Virgin Mary nightlight row

And the zinc-nosed oddly shaped thorax people
flopping around in too-loose and too-tight
bulk-sale trunks and undaring two-pieces
dashing gleefully toward the water while
picking their way deftly around fish bones
carefully examined by an extended dog family
and hamming it up laughing in the splashing surf
rechristening their kids in the refreshing froth
this is fun, you are fun, your name shall be fun

Tyke-sized pastel plastic pails and shovels
afterthought heirlooms sifting glinty grains
washed smooth finally and worn to a dazzle
now packed shining into rising mounds
and patted expertly into bulging redoubts
that hermit crabs will sidle around
once sunlight subsides and
the spreading edge of horizon
becomes the cooling saline haze of night
removing from sight the distant offshore
platform hulks with their derrick spires
and towering grain elevators way over at the port
all scattering anew past the limits of thought
vanquished once and again forever
all through the long quiet drive home
and especially come Monday morning
with paradise but a state of mind
but now far down the curving shore are
only the gas station lights and overhead
the occasional breakthrough star

Larry Piltz
Indian Cove
Austin, Texas