Early Natural History

The girls his brother brought

down to the beach that summer

were different every weekend,

but really all the same:

cinchy, giggly blondes.

He couldn't be bothered to notice

just which one it was now

fresh from the waves and dripping

(they always did) all over

today's baroque sand-fortress.

They were worse than dogs that way.

His castles stood the grandest

as far as he could see:

extravagantly buttressed,

turreted, topped by jaunty

paper-straw flagpoles.

His massive moats were filled

with bucket after bucket;

impregnability

was what it was all about.

Drops from her sopping hair

were melting away a cornice:

"Stay over the moat," he yelled,

"if you have to stand and drip."

She giggled and walked away

with his brother, equally wet.

He heard his brother say,

"Tt isn't the waves you have to

worry about, it's only

the undertow"-a thing he said

to each wet girl each weekend.

They left him to his repairs.

He watched them walk off laughing,

the late afternoon sun

throwing their pipestem shadows back

across the reddening sand.

He thought they were all just chicken.

The Undertoad-he was only five

and it didn't scare him a bit.

It only came out at night,

breaking the sea's black mirror

just at the turn of the tide,

searching the deserted beach

with eyes globed and dirty gold

as the family Packard's headlights.

Two hops brought it ashore,

landed it in a baleful squat

athwart his helpless bulwarks.

No defense against that.

Up in a stuffy, resinous

bedroom under the eaves,

behind the dunes, almost asleep,

wrapped slack in the warp and woof

of all the sounds of the house

(footsteps up and down stairs,

whisperings, muffled laughter)

some nights he thought he heard it

rising above the sea-boom:

the croak of spite and triumph-there!-

as the walls came tumbling down.