There are no shells on the beach.
The children have taken them all.
 
Watch them come and go at lightning speed.
See them explode running from vans, RVs,
 
cars of every description, school buses
proclaiming public or private origins
 
in block letters on gauche yellow sides.
Screaming children whose banshee clamor
 
startles the flight of wheeling gulls
into broken circles and torn ellipses.
 
Small children whose eyes glitter with
the greed of their chance acquisitions
 
and whose mouths are often pursed in
an arrogant and self-serving assurance
 
of their own supremacy in the universe.
The adults in their charge follow slowly,
 
incapable of damping the vicious avidity
of their progeny or of prying bright booty
 
from the clasp of sharp and tiny fists
Their distended bodies collapse and sink
 
by infinitesimal degrees into the sand.
Overcome by the heat and a lethargy
 
induced by their constant procreation,
they survive for the next generation.
 
At dusk a lone beachcomber wanders
the trampled and deserted shoreline,
 
a sloppy hat upon his weathered brow.
His shell collection is far from complete
 
and there is no hope of completing it now.
He unearths merely a few shattered remnants,
 
notable only for how their grained interiors
can sometimes shine with muted intensity
 
in the swiftly failing horizontal light.
Tomorrow he vows to rise at first dawn,
 
to begin his trek before the onslaught,
to claim rare finds fresh from the brine.
 
But in truth he is a family man himself,
long beleaguered by children of his own.
 
There will be no time for singular pursuits
before the day and its shells are gone.
 
 

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