My Coolpix has a beach/snow setting.  The extremes, like Stalin and Hitler, meet with a handshake.

Editing in iPhoto, I turn my beach pics into snow pics by turning down the temperature.  When the sand turns white, the haze turns blue.

I live summer each winter, my frostbitten fingers on fire in a basin of water.

Sand crabs surface in backwash and burrow back next wave.

Wicker chairs bristle in the flaccid heat.

Sand fences, home security systems, and neighborhood watches promote dune protection.

For if snow is sand, then wind is water, eroding the snow it brings.

As kids, we’d build castles and dig ravines, and the tide would leave it all smooth. Time is tide, and memories are the shells we collect.

The moon keeps time, and each tide is noon.  All we build lies between the tides.

What border lies between darkness and light?  Where is it so light that one can’t see light?  And what light ever held a mirror to its light?

For make no mistake: evil does exist in the world.  The waves break and churn; the shoreline shifts but never snaps.

Where does driftwood grow?  Beneath the forested sea, far from the febrile shore.

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Posted January 10, 2010.