Barrier Islands

And the plows keep pushing the sand, off Route 12, across parking lots, all along the Atlantic coast, while farther south, in towns like Buxton, five, six, seven houses slide into the sea. People capture the destruction with drones, furniture mired in swirling sand. It reminds us of the beach castles we made as children with carefully constructed moats and shell windows, swamped and quickly swept away by high tide. We track the progress in Chincoteague where they are working to reclaim the parking lots, September, then October. But these are barrier islands, large sand bars shifting with the tide, grains of sand in constant motion. As a pier lists in Virginia Beach, and sea foam bubbles across asphalt, we wonder when they will give up and stop trying to force nature to yield to their will.