Covered in enough sun screen
to resemble a basted turkey
and wearing a light, long sleeved shirt,
I approach the beach dragging
the moldy cumbersome beach umbrella.
My canvas bag contains two bottles
of UV 50 sun screen,
two towels; one of which is extra long to cover my legs,
a novel where the plot is going nowhere,
several bottles of soon to be warm water
and one large straw beach hat.
My swarthy wife has given me permission
to go into the ocean waves at fifteen minute intervals
followed by the complicated, complete reapplication
of sun screen in total umbrella shade.
While she lies bikini clad on a towel
in the direct sunlight,
I reach for the novel and hope
some sort of plot development occurs
in the next six vacation days.
R. Gerry Fabian is a retired English instructor. As a poet and novelist,
he has been publishing his writing since 1972 in various literary magazines.
His web page is https://rgerryfabian.wordpress.com
Twitter @GerryFabian2
He has published three books of his published poems, Parallels,
Coming Out Of The Atlantic and Electronic Forecasts.
In addition, he has published three novels.
They are Getting Lucky (The Story), Memphis Masquerade, and Seventh Sense.
All these books are available both as ebooks and paperbacks at all publishers
including Amazon, Apple Books and Barnes and Noble.
He lives in Doylestown, PA.