Ogunquit

The beach has its own tide
of chairs and towels and coolers
radios, sunglasses, umbrellas
cell phones, paperback novels
et cetera.

Waxing every morning
waning by afternoon
accompanied as always
by a fugue of conversations
the rise and fall of sandcastles.

As it so happens the sea
is so cold today
that the yang of humanity
is perfectly balanced
by the yin of blue.

I want to swim out to the place
where water and sky meet.
I think it would be blank the way
a page can be blank
the way the mind must feel

when it reaches the edge
of meditation — the place
where all thought stops.
But the tide pulls both ways
and at the moment my daughter

wants to know where the moon
goes when it isn’t round.
I explain how it’s always there
right where you’d expect it to be
safe in night’s pocket
in an absence of light.