When I heard the news
that the young poet
had died down in the depths
of the sea, down
in the depths of that sparkling
sea, I thought of you
in blue wonder.

The paper states simply:
His face had been eaten away.

The town folk gathered—
looked at what they could
not fathom, what they should
not have had to fathom: beauty
so quickly disappeared.
Those on the beach
when it happened
worked quickly—finding
anything that would catch
and placed his body on a pile
of mostly sticks—watched
in grotesque silence
as his body burned
and when all was said and done
each body, aware of its own
thumping, slouched home
with new unwanted knowledge
about what exactly it was
they feared.