Beach Lots, St. George Island, June.

7:23 am and the morning sun
pries sweat from scalp and forehead,
a saline bath, poor-man’s spa, it runs into
my eyes and stings almost as much as
seeing new subdivided lots only
92 yards from the high tide line.

They’ve been dozed, but indigenous plants
say “not so fast”, and even some sand pines
are left, to karate chop the breeze. Beach
sunflowers match the chrome-yellow, eastern
orb — every name has a maritime preface
here in the Eastern Panhandle, from random
clumps of sea oats that resemble Dad’s
scalp after chemo, to the white trumpets
of beach morning glories trying to climb
the laid PVC sewer lines sticking
up through sugar-sand like the tips of a
fossilized plesiosaur that crawled
up on the beach to die, but these “bones”
presage Lexus wagons and sockless loafers.

This land is residual, the “forgotten
coast”, and many things sport a broken face,
especially Gramma Earth — strewn with
beer cans and scraggly plastic bags from
the Pig. Yesterday, I parked my Highlander
next to a Bentley rag-top, oxymoronically
sitting at the Dollar Store, which sells
produce…