Spring Beach Walk

-Saint Simons Island, GA

by Steven Croft

Down the path by the white property wall
of the International Style mansion, its straight lines
bordered beautifully by hard and crooked limbs
of shaded oaks, third story rising above rugged ironwork
of high branches, plate glass windows glinting bright
with sun through the leaves, this is the last house
on the public access path to native coast.

At wall’s end two gnarled and bright green cedars
stand apart as guardians of a dark entryway
to a maritime scrub tree cave, roof intertwined
with branches shaved level from above by the sea’s
salt wind, haven for short-eared owl who waits
into night for the scurry of brown rabbits and mice.
Likewise, I take Emerson’s advice to adopt nature’s pace,
take my shoes off, stand here on leaves and cold sand.

Later, I step the path out of this shaded natural room
into the dune meadow, feet cautious for sandspurs
along the hot white trail.  Breeze ruffles brown-frayed ends
of green palm tree fronds — sweetgrass, greenbrier, yucca
make a green and brown, low-chroma Serengeti plain
for buzzing horseflies, vernal bees, and waggle-dancing
foragers.  I hear breakers crash beyond the final dune rise.

From the other side of the world an invisible moon pulls
the blue-green sea in.  I sit on a low post hammered down
to keep vehicles from entering the split in the dunes.
At the shore, loose sand made firm by fans of incoming water,
a man throws a tennis ball a wet, joyous black dog chases.
Far down the beach tiny figures are in an impressionist
painting’s sun-haze.  Gulls circle and land as a lone brown
pelican — saved by Rachel Carson so many years ago — glides…

Here, a day as exquisite as a speckled bird’s egg, the only
sadness internal, and easily exhaled to the clean salt-smell
of wind, all is right with the world for as long as I choose to stay.

Steven Croft lives on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia, where his yard is lush with vegetation. His latest chapbook is At Home with the Dreamlike Earth (The Poetry Box, 2023). His work has appeared in Willawaw Journal, San Pedro River Review, So It Goes, The James Dickey Review, Deep South Magazine, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature and other places, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.