A Walk

February on the narrow beach, 3

o

A.M. I set out south. Cape Cod Light

on its crumbling cliff above me turns

its wand of light so steadily

it might be tolling a half-life,

it might be the second-hand

of a schoolroom clock,

a kind of blind radar.

These bluffs deposited by glaaciers

are giving themselves away

to the beaches down the line, three

feet of coastline a year. I follow

them south at my own slow pace.

Ahead my grandfather died

in a boat and my father

found him and here I come.

If I cleave to the base of the I berm

the offshore wind swirls grit

just over my head and the backwash

rakes it away. If I keep going

south toward my grandfatherís house

in Chatham, and beyond,

the longshore current grinds the sand

finer the farther I go. It spreads

it wider and the beaches sift

inland as far as they can go

before beachgrass laces them down

for now. It gets to be spring,

I keep walking, it gets to be

summer. Families loll.

Now the waves are small; they keep

their swash marks close to home.

A little inland from the spurge

and sea-rockets my tan sons kick

a soccer ball north, against

grains that may once have been

compacted to sandstone, then

broken back to grains, bumbling

and driven and free again,

shrinking along the broadening edge.