Footprints (Small Minded Men) Poem by Eric Cockrell

we walk barefoot down nuclear beaches,
driven, without direction, to leave footprints.
coughing up spit, and avoiding shadows,
of small minded men following
the legend of the phallus,
to early, and inconvenient deaths.
gulls swing over in drunken glaze,
we bend to pick up a broken shell.
naming it ocean, we place it to our ears...
as the incoming tide swirls at our feet.
shark fins, and the bodies of dead fish,
the stink of salt, and the rhythm...
lost inside the sound and the roar,
we never notice our footprints washed away....