beach squeezed out like toothpaste tracing the lake with lipstick, sand eager to scrub the shore clean when the typhoon whether as an independent force or a brush in the grip of a higher power condescends to descend, the patient waiting a song hanging over the whole legendary scene long enough for birds to hop along it picking up crumbs that squeak in that second as beaks are raised just before the swallowing. -Thax Douglas. 12/31/11 Off Minor Dubuque, Iowa