Mid-day, a slightest shivering mist
but still the sun staring over
your shoulder, those wisps
stealing across peripheral fields
like several clever students late for class.
The professor with the leathery lips
perched in the cottonwood
that commands the nearby hillside
blows his smoke to remind you
of all those variously true theologies.
A cedar-sided shack two hundred yards
beyond the rusted yew comes and goes,
now sharp, now fading, floating
among the dunes, on grass and breeze,
perpetually tipping its shabby hat, polite
and stiffened to stretches of sand,
to the breakers barely emerging
from the fog. And whether you sit here
making something of this or not—
whether you care or not—it appears
you’ve cared, and there it is.

Photo by Adam Kring on Unsplash