Third Beach

by Steve Arntson
first posted on Tribe.net
Ygg's Horse discussion group
February 20, 2008

Dunes dunes and contradictions
Dunes of the Third Beach
dunes in the rain
It is raining on a "Lawrence of Arabia" set
The place is inexplicably flooded

Dunes and ducks familiar ducks familiar shores
Yet paradox is added and the Oregon coast is a pull-apart pastry in the morning

It entertains two identities
The desert the Eden

There are deer in the puddles in the low places
Eyes' rainbows assigned their respective untermittent suns!
Their colors compete with Auda abu-Taye's battle flags!

Deer and the expectation of more
Camels, too and
Of all the times to have it happen
I am deprived of my own essential prayers

Time-being time
Beautiful healthy
Yet someone closed the door
Perhaps the Shadow People

It may be some rainy war
approximating all that Mohammed imagined possible
in a downpour

I wouldn't be surprised to see Omar Sheriff in a yellow slicker
Or T.E. Lawrence trying to keep his pages dry
"The Seven Pillars of Wisdom", perhaps

So make it a temple of slip-and-slide
Color it tan with pines
and buggies getting up speed for a dash to Mecca

Go anywhere west or anywhere east the sands deceive

"Third Beach", she'd said
"Take you there
past Umpqua Lighthouse and the oyster beds
jetty north and jetty south
the waterway of warnings..."

And she did
And in those first moments of Third Beach
Drudgery was forgotten
There was a sense of lifting
And I'd trust that like money for groceries in heaven

Just concentrate
And a desert is entrusted to a rain forest's care

"What are your thoughts?" I thought
Indeed what irony of rainfall informs your fear of desert regions?
What jihad to overrun your campfire's embers only?

Asking it becomes quite clear that Nature is policed
We've had a good look at its constable Light and Dark
And suspects wander
and consider the odds of getting caught

I'm somewhat unavailable myself
The way something has absented itself
and left the sand to the mercy of rainfall


by Steve Arntson, copyright 2008