By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The page remembers one last afternoon at the beach just before weather and surf erase the scene.
Its power comes from delay. Even though the place was said to be rebuilt, the speaker still cannot bring himself to return, so memory remains more vivid than recovery.
An elegiac beach memory opening on capitalized cue lines, 'THE LAST TIME I / SAW THE BEACH / WE WORE our white trousers,' then a misty afternoon at the Boat House with 'two beautiful / women' just before 'high winds and / surf would take it away.' The close holds the real ache: hearsay that the pier survived and 'Every thing that went under / was built back up,' undercut by the admission 'still I have not gone / back to see it.' Memory is preferred to verification - the speaker keeps the loss rather than test the repair.