A change in air soon defines a lonely beach
after Labor Day, as if a calmed breeze,
dark clouds and serene gunmetal seas
could lineate my life’s declining reach.
A world away, the gassed move, but not much,
the juvenile debate of where to draw,
or not, a line in sand. Its final flaw
—the dead don’t count—waits for sand’s tacit touch.
Displayed, as in an Irish wake gone mad,
the bodies, lacking souls that once they had,
their lungs gargled with blood, the air as gun,
it’s murder, and it cries out, but for what?
Revenge? Justice? The law is pled for naught.
What sire lets sand entomb the rising sun?
After a four decade career in the law, James Cronin has returned to his first loves, literary studies and writing.