~ BEACHED (Haibun) Heat hangs, torrid, pressing upon tired shoulders. Touched by the occasional warm starfish an ancient, patchy, bird-shit monument kneels in puddled sand beneath a sky stitched to the sea. below blue sails billow over blue Ripples circle the rock where, in the tide's cloud-crawl, tiny crabs get on with their crabby lives and I wonder how words can convey this sense without images to the eye. On this slow, tedious, amplified afternoon, I lean against the colossus baffled by the clamour of these idiot gulls, ignorant in the art of give and take, because it's perfectly clear who should yield. crushed shell in a footprint empty beach ~ ©Regina Piroska (Gina) published Abstractaphy April 2025 published Drifting Sands January 2022 - ed: Adelaide B Shaw