Walking on the sand
he noticed that
erosion plains occur
every so often,
as run-off from heavy rains
strip away layers and sculpt
the low-lying landscape.

It is only a lake
and not a great ocean.

It is a place where rivers and creeks collide.
Behind a manmade wall,
where ancestral lands
and cemeteries were slowly drowned,
the living and the dead
were displaced with equal sluggishness.
The basin slowly filled
to cover first the grasses,
then underbrush and the trees.

He never felt the desire
to trample a sand castle,
except this once.