A MAN RECITING ALOUD ON THE BEACH

A man reciting aloud on the beach

never thought he would be doing this,

sitting crossed-legged on the beach in competition with the waves

to see who has the louder voice. His audience, a group of retirees

who have chased the sunset and settled on the west coast of Florida,

have brought folding beach chairs from their homes,

and break into smiles as they listen to

his gravelly voice spiral airborne in the

transparent receptacle called poetry,

and then fall to the ground to become

fine grit under their feet. Only he is aware:

whenever he recites a poem in Chinese,

a flock of seagulls will use friendly wings over his head

to indicate each character’s tone;

and when he uses his clumsy English

to recite the text in translation, it is not he who speaks

but a halting thespian who hides behind his Adam’s apple

and rehearses the outlandish lines

of a foreign actor in a supporting role. As he recites

he raises his head and gazes off into the distance, there

where the sky ends, and Goodwife Sea

is calling Sun to come home after a full day’s labor.

In that instant the man feels that he too has become

a member of the audience, and before he knows it

a great poet by the name of Wind closes in

on the microphone clipped to his collar; and when

for a moment he pauses, Wind begins to use the sound

it borrows from every shell and leaf

to recite the one imperishable poetic line:

silence, a silence at seventeen miles per hour.