Bruised
Scarred
Burnt

But OK

I spit sand and salt
From my parched mouth

Then

Hunger

So up now
Onto the roiling sea of dunes
With their smaller wavelets
Of grasses in the wind

From the tallest
Scan up and down the shore
Only waves of ocean and grass
And the tidal strip of sand between

Inland
A barren of pines
Obscures whatever topography
Or structures
May be beyond

At the forward fringe
Where dunes meet forest

Thin
Scraggy
Scattered

Windswept trees become soon enough
A thickly boughed and wooded

Ideas without a tide
Or a beach to wash up on
Soaring on an unseen wind

I am adrift in a familiar peace
The pleasures of moments lived fully
On sun and sand excursions
Whether accompanied or
As preference sometimes won out
An adventure of solitude

Before long
The harsh admonishments
Of sun and wind take their toll
And while chewing my lip
In meandering thought
A chapped bit of it tears away
Leaving the taste of iron
The sting of revealed dermis

The elements have reduced my options
To an accommodation with mortality 

Move or die
Shade or die