Past Our Hotel

This poem came to be during the spring of 2008 after a trip to Oak Island, North Carolina. I joined in on a large group that hailed from Greensboro, including my sister and several of her friends that I was familiar with. The weekend nights began at the Captain's Cove Motel and culminated in jubilant outings to the beach, where nude sea bathing was all the rage, an activity that has yet to be surpassed in its sense of liberation.

Past our hotel
And down the beach access,
Our feet give way to sand,
Silent as we pass
The marsh with barking frogs
Camouflaged in water that runs
Down from corrugated roofs,
Treeless streets,
Into the gutter runs.

Beneath the clearness of a coastal moon
We cross the interdunal flats,
The sea-oat wall,
Onto the gaping strand,
Where the sand comes
Like a thousand needle-points to cling
Onto our naked bodies; spotless
We present ourselves
Like sweeping vagrants
Through the ruffled surf.

Five boys again, we run,
Hit the tidal rhythm --
Outlines drawn into
And out of a thousand difficulties,
Submerged, mixed and lost in the vortex
Drawn down from island corners.