Tourists are a nation of their own.
We know them by their whoops and calls at every cloud and wave.
Each gull, each tern, each pelican draws wrinkled fingers toward the sky.
Each shell sends them bouncing through the surf on pale and pimpled legs.
Dragging their blue-striped hotel towels, their SPF infinity lotion,
and their cameras, they go down on the sea again, and again.
And the sea returns the favor, laps their feet in foam
nibbles their legs with fish, raises the wind to brush their hair.
Its treasures become theirs for a moment. The continental shelf,
like a what-not, displays all of its wares, shiny and shabby:
A small shell with purplish brown stripes drags along the tide line.
Ochre and fuchsia starfish sink into the sand that rolls back
like windowshades laid on the earth.
Porpoises dot the horizon, playing games that we still haven't learned.
And almost out of sight, behind a dune, one great blue heron decays.