SHORT BEACH REVISTED

by Stuart Chalfant

I return to the beach
and walk among the dunes
I ran through as a child.
The Atlantic, gray and green,
is its restless self, reshaping
the margin with its winter storms.

The out-going tide hurries
seaward through Jones Inlet.
Eel grass ruffles in November’s air,
sand ripples under the urgent wind.

Small bits of shell emerge,
much like the ones I found
so long ago -blue nacre of the quahog
and salmon radials of scallop.
I gather some, stow them
in a pocket for safe keeping.

Everything is old as it used to be
and I have caught up.
Now we are weathered and
time-worn together,
the beach and I,
slipping off the edge
into a changeless sea.

Sempre Avanti

by Stuart Chalfant

The first shell comes in.
Our platoon hits the dirt.
We hug the earth face down and flat,
hoping to survive the bombardment,
a mindless meat grinder
working its horror among us.
Intimations of hell itself,
it rains dirt, flesh, blood, pain, rage.
Ten minutes of agony, head throbbing,
ears numb, I roll on my back.
Screaming shrapnel scissors
the long dead grasses waving
above the rim of my helmet.
Finally it ends. Most of us get up, move
forward, leaving dead and wounded behind.

Mug Shots

by Stuart Chalfant

A sign by the coffee shop door read
“alcohol use in this area prohibited by law.”
The mall police arrested him
as he sat an outside table.
They saw him pour a shot of hooch
from a flask into his coffee mug.
They photographed him in the act.
He pleased “no contest”
before a blank-eyed magistrate.
Court-appointed psychologists
could not decide whether he wanted
caffeine to keep himself awake, or
alcohol to help him get to sleep.

From then after
he looked twice over his shoulder