Gazebo? Gone. Now there’s a seawall west
of all the parking lots on Norman Road,
a mound of broken jetties in a load
of gravel hauled by trucks from Wildwood Crest.
There are walls from Sandy Hook to Little Egg,
a tribute to the lapse of lunar tides,
the rising wave of sharks and suicides,
the Atlantic Ocean now a powder keg.
Over the wall I’ve come, through sun and sand
with a black eye from the package store
in Neptune. I’m alone. A castaway
upon a wreck of mussels on the shore,
gray driftwood from a fallen lifeguard stand,
and one pink flag that hasn’t washed away.

(Photo by Brandi Schuster)