It Happened by the Sea by Betsy Mars

It Happened by the Sea

I misread a line as the quills argue over someone’s sandwich crust
and envision disembodied pens jousting over some metaphorical food,
squawking while the hand goes about more important business,
like stroking the cat, watering, the long, quiet work of mending. The tips dip,
inked to the gills, drip their arbitrary ramblings on some thin thing
that once resembled bark. The gulls swoop for crabs emerging
as the waves recede along the shore, erasing footprints, writing,

castles made with pails of sand, bread crumb trails.

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Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, a photographer, and publishes an occasional anthology through Kingly Street Press. She is an assistant editor at Gyroscope Review. Poetry publications include Rise Up Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, New Verse News, Sky Island, and Minyan. She is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee. Betsy’s photos have been featured in RATTLE’s Ekphrastic Challenge, Spank the Carp, Praxis, and Redheaded Stepchild. She is the author of Alinea and co-author of In the Muddle of the Night with Alan Walowitz.