Mortgage-bruised pilgrims
linger along Silver Strand,
pop caps against plywood boarding,
edges furred with salt-rust flakes
from storms that chewed the pier.

old-guard punks, now plumbers,
lean on pickups, joking,
'snarling localism isn’t dead,
just semi-retired.'

They pass tortillas, warm Modelo,
radio stalled on a thrasher summer
thirty years gone.

Seabee retirees
swap tide updates on porch steps;
third-generation surfers
stitch wax into their palms
and still call this south jetty 'church'.

Simple block-party rules:
bring tri-tip, share the cooler,
fight for parking later.

Liquored voices bark
about trash fees
and dead cell bars;
but when that seawall cracks
a dozen neighbors arrive with rebar,
arguing only grout.

Here my son and I rinsed sand
from our ankles with a garden hose,
him shrieking, laughing, shivering
when cold bit his feet.

I once yelled at him, raging
for dropping keys into surf,
as if that mattered more
than a day of chasing, wrestling in the tide.
He doesn’t remember.
I can’t forget.

Now, he’s taller than me,
vanishing downshore.

I stand outside, voices rise
in the salt-hard wind.
Barbecue smoke drifts
from driveways, tailgates,
settles into dusk-lit lawn chairs.

I walk the strand.
Oil rigs shoulder haze,
Channel Islands crouch,
like silent wardens.

Boarded bungalows peel to raw board,
splintering porch rails;
nails weep orange along the grain.
A bike frame, chainless,
reddens into memory beside dune grass
still gripping sand.

There is grace in forgetting:
a tide lowers its voice,
sand swallows what was said.