A Thing I Did on a Beach in Florida Once

If John McPhee were to write this poem,

every member of my girlfriend’s family

would have been interviewed about the occurrence and thusly mentioned.

Between my girlfriend and her mother,

a familiar setting for the three of us,

I sat reading my book (The Ransom Of Russian Art by John McPhee),

pointing my sandy toes to the west toward the Gulf of Mexico.

Here, there are no overcoats to be worn, no artist’s union or secret police to avoid

and the threat of being sent to a labor camp

is about as far away from this Florida beach

as the high yellow sun that hangs overhead.

How lucky to be so far, in space and time,

from the struggles of Evgeny Rukhin

and those other “unofficial” Soviet-born artists,

officially trapped between crime and punishment.

It was a thing I thought of and then did—what freedom!

I stood up, leaving my girlfriend and her mother behind, and went,

book in hand, just in from the edge of the shoreline.

Waves splashed up my legs, washing past me and back,

sinking my two feet in the sand.

After a number pages, forty perhaps, (I wasn’t counting the waves)

I read that the K.G.B. burned Rukhin’s tiny apartment

with him in it. I looked down to find myself

ankle-deep in cold sand and heart-deep in the humanity of the thing.

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