By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
On the Delaware coast, a nearly empty late-season beach with pole fishermen and no lifeguards becomes charged by the fresh fact of one hundred and fifty-eight rescues.
Oregon enters the Delaware beach as a comparison point, so the coast is already doubled between present place and remembered scale. The middle-class fishermen and the speaker keeping his swimming away from their lines give the shore a social order, but it is one stripped of formal protection. Mentioning one hundred and fifty-eight rescues in the week before arrival makes the emptiness feel ominous instead of serene.
The prose anchor for the whole lifeguard sequence: 'I am on the Delware coast,' 'Forty miles of land almost / like Oregon; late in the / season, skattered folks, / middle class with pole fish- / ermen.' The speaker keeps 'my swimming and my girl- / friend' clear of their lines, notes that 'the lifeguard went home / exactly the day before we got / here' after 'One hundred and fifty / eight rescue's,' and reads the emptiness as 'almost / back in the old days when no- / body else was there.' The figure 158 makes the calm feel exposed rather than restful.