Lilac Evening Sand

The red-gold afternoon, increasingly

Late and windy, is jostled with white-capped waves

Blowing in blue successive lanes of thunder

From distance tossing turquoise and abrupt.

Now in the dainty jewel-light of day,

Precious with termination, the touseled sand

Is cheerfully deserted, holding yet

Imprint of feet and transitory castles,

And remembered voices rippling shallow-clear

As warm tide-pools relinquished on the slope.

One bather only leaps with the jasper wave

Mightily tumbling into pastel foam;

While a few spectators of the vacant brine

Build a fire for the company of flame

And defensive acrid smoke - against the flies

That gather upon the lilac evening sand.