A beach day for masochists

Moody Beach, in Wells, Maine, in the off-season.

It was cold and windy, scarcely the day
to take a walk on that long beach
Everything was withdrawn as far as possible,
indrawn: the tide far out, the ocean shrunken,
seabirds in ones or twos.
The rackety, icy, offshore wind
numbed our faces on one side;
disrupted the formation
of a lone flight of Canada geese;
and blew back the low, inaudible rollers
in upright, steely mist.

From “The End of March,’’ by Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), who was born in Worcester and died in Boston but traveled widely in between. For many years she had a summer place on the Maine Coast.