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Cover photo of
Topinabee Beach Park 

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Empty Beach

Early morning is the time of absences
and the unsettling of unique presence,
when up and down the churning surf ribbon
only straggled birds and bubbling clams
hold haphazard position in emptiness
and the lone biped, ignored as insignificant,
feels his fusty persona leaching out
on the windblown sand over green water
until the purging reveals a raw loneliness
that must be poulticed with the spit of others.

Topinabee

When my age was barely in double digits
I walked alone on a little used railroad track
through woods and along a lake shore
to the quiet village of Topinabee
I spoke little but looked closely at
the summer somnolent goings on.
Then bought and ate ice cream,
and clambered up the embankment
for the two miles and some return.
I was barely missed or noticed.
What I saw on the tracks, discarded
or abandoned, dead or living,
was never recorded, rarely mentioned.
It was almost nothing. And complete.

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Ed Ahern © 2024