Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area

If it wasn’t for dune grass, these houses
wouldn’t be here. Wind and tide
would eat away the foundations—
that’s why they planted it long ago.

Behind the Fred Meyer parking lot
a dune towers like a frozen wave
and every day they truck away sand.
I share the longing for stability

for solid and unmoving ground
but part of me yearns for free sand
yearns to run over rippling dunes
like a gull soaring over water.


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