Its back and forth, ad nauseum,
ought to make the sea a bore. But walks along the shore

cure me. Salt wind’s the best solution for
dissolving my ennui in,

along with these protean
sadnesses that sometimes swim

invisibly
as comb-jelly

a glass or two of wine below my surface.
Some regrets

won’t untangle. Others loosen as I watch the waves
spreading their torn nets

of foam along the sand
to dry. I walk and walk and walk and walk, letting their haul

absorb me. One seal’s hull
scuttled to bone staves

gulls scream
wheeling above. And here… small, diabolical,

a skate’s egg case,
its horned purse nested on pods of bladder-wort

that still squirt
brine by the eyeful. Some oily slabs of whale skin, or

—no, just an
edge of tire

flensed from a commoner leviathan.
Everywhere, plastic nurdles gleam

like pearls or caviar
for the avian gourmand

and bits of sponge dab the wounded wrack-line,
dried to froths of air

smelling of iodine.
Hours blow off down the beach like spindrift,

leaving me with an immense
less-solipsistic sense

of ruin, and, as if
it’s a gift, assurance

of ruin’s recurrence.