DOING TRIVIAL THINGS BY THE SEA
There’s a certain pleasure
in doing trivial things
next to the sea.
Like thinking up off rhymes
based on the names of fruit
or making animals
with our fingers.
It’s a defense really,
kind of an urge
we get when the sea
arches its back
and collapses
again and again
at the edge of its own eternity.
Let us wear strange hats
and stare out at the sea.
Let us assemble great lines
of useless words to release
at the sea. Let us take advantage
of its implacability
to say shocking things.
Hopeless, foolish little dances
at the low tide mark
revel in our shared slavery
to various facts of physics,
but satisfy our seldom filled
need to be sophomoric, disrespectful.
The sea is filling in for death
today, motivating us to whistle
poorly past its big facts.
Lets build a bonfire too close
to the water, and ordain ourselves
princes of a glorious irrelevance.