Winter Beach

Seagulls sit like white frost
over bleached sands
watching the waves take bite after bite out of an
abandoned shore, ravenous
for watermelon
and beach cricket.

Salted skies scream kids off their lawn,
then howl for those young real estate tycoons who
long ago constructed castles
on their undeveloped sands.

Seashells
remain uncollected
thoughts.

Planks of pier
shiver near
the boats that bob in their sleep.

That shrill ocean air breathes
like stainless steel.

Nothing.

For miles.

Just acid-wash denim
and the hand-stitched seam of a horizon line,
barren of any leaves.