The poem is Chair Precision...

"Chair Precision" illustration from Nancy Standlee for my "Dreams of the Turtle King" beach poem book.


The poem is CHAIR PRECISION and the illustration is for a stanza in the poem...

"The beach chairs
in front of the
resort form a
straight line,
curious precision
in the sand...."

Each morning, the hotel staff would be setting up the beach chairs and umbrellas on neat lines for the hotel guests. The 20-something guys that would do the work were efficient and seemed to have a process to get up the chairs, lay out the cushions, and then rock the umbrellas into the sand. After putting each umbrella next to a chair, they would come back around and open them for the day.  

I always found the neat and orderly lines of chairs and umbrellas an interesting contrast to the natural chaos that was the daily change of the beach.  I guess even then, lines and patterns were attracting my attention as a foreshadowing of my love of Miksang Contemplative photography. In hindsight, I think of these beach poems as Miksang poems that look at the world as I experienced it in that moment, full of the imagery of that experience.