Beach Combers
I ask you a question: what makes the perfect rock or shell or object to pick up? How do you decide between the palm of your hand and your fingers what to pocket and what to discard?
Kids on a Raft
Three of you, definitely cousins of sorts, or thrown together for optics by your parents’ hoping that you will stick together, now to rock the paddle board, oops one of you fell off, laughter and then the onslaught of tears, oh wait, no, salt got in your eye.
Book Readers
Surrounded by satchels, sitting under a deck umbrella you dug with a shovel. Who brings their own shovel to the beach? We do. Six books in three stacks. Gummy bear snacks. And one nap.
Dads with Beers
A distant hover, bodies with board shorts. Consulting each other, coach style, who will be the first to check in.
Completely Covered
Old man long sleeves, towel over the rest of his body, weighted in the shade. Hat over nose and mouth. Sleeping. Did he put on sunscreen today?
Aging
Tattoo hipsters with teal beach chairs and matching umbrella.
The QPOC Flag
Flying with old queers with mullets and banana hammocks.
More Kids on Rafts
This one getting rescued by grandma. She has perfect free style form.
Wading Mothers
Digging feet into sand and diving. Swimming far out.
Our Crew Converses
The three of us lazily making comments, forming sounds with lips like a spoken word beach opera set within a Wes Anderson folly. Echoing sounds of summer on an island in the ocean, sand on asses while planes glide along horizon lines. See how the planar space gets broken up like so with fishing boats along this axis, cerulean blue skies, dots that make up small islands in the distance, bloated guts buried somewhere making convex imprints in towels, overlapping beach chairs clacking, oscillating light from windblown umbrellas? What are those specks in the distance, whitewashed skin tone reapplication. Those folks set up camp way to close to us. Sneezes. Small white bird death dives. White sails and hands upon heads with laced fingers and elbows back.
Marguerite Zorach, Diana of the Sea, 1940, oil on canvas, Portland Art Museum, Maine.