The Bathers

Landsmen crowd the shore like children at a carnival, exclaiming, pointing seaward, shading their eyes with hands and books. They bring their various lives along, as dangling and cumbersome as folding deck chairs in their arms, as intimately varied as their costumes and as basically the same.

Old ladies peer nearsightedly and poke the softer sand with canes, Brown and agile as seals, the younger folk run together quickly; smaller children disappear and reappear, crying with sandy mouths.

Fathers shyly step across to the moving edge of surf, and stand there, staring; they look naked and cold in their white skins. They turn and awkwardly advance upon the waves, drawing back and hopping forward, laughing excitedly, as dogs meeting the sea for the first time.