Day 552

The children are running on the beach.
It’s a late afternoon in spring:
Golden light, nearly sunset,
the sky beginning to be streaked
with purple, blue.  There’s a man
doing jumping jacks
and two large dogs
racing in circles, kicking up sand
in their wild delight.  The tide
teases the children:  barefoot,
they leap over it and above it,
as though it were a great
moving rope.  Only miles
from here, warplanes
are dropping their vicious cargo.
The jumping man 
knows it.  The children
know it.  But for now,
for this moment, this beach
could be any beach, the sea
reaching this place
as it does any other.  For now
there is only this squealing, this
laughter, these joyous dogs.  These waves
moving rhythmically, predictably, in and out.