Black holes in the beach

Black holes in the beach - oh the beach! Where boys and girls with buckets and spades, sandcastles and popsicles, frolicked in the sun. Where men fell pray to copper hornets, zooming by - front, back and sides - until the poison struck and the beaches receded to nothing but I...And then there's her. Her with the white snarling teeth, and that ocean jaw. She's cunning, oh beautiful in her cunning ways! She simmers like bubbling broth, flat lid tingling on the back burner. Softly, calmly, her ripples lap at the land like the cat's tongue in milk. But do not let her halcyon ways hoodwink your wavering eye, because beneath her deep blue shroud, she has you locked in her sight, eye to the scope, finger at the ready - her fixation and a steady flow of saliva form the white froth I call l'écume du jour - she will devour us all one day! Oh yes, make no mistake, she will be most unforgiving in that regard. "Build the defences" I hear you cry. And why not? We have become masters of fortification, and not to forget that the beach itself is a natural line of defence, a noble buffer, strong at heart, though one who is not unaccustomed to defeat. Trenches, walls, barricades and blockades: they are the likely candidates to keep her at bay, but they all share the same vulnerability: time - all things crumble and fall in time. So I say put down the bricks and mortar and lay your trowels to rest, and since time will not be defeated let us go in the direction that time is taking us: build a boat. A mighty vessel that spans two continents in breadth but floats lighter than a cork in a sink - a 'Contintental Ark'! And what the great ocean takes from us in land, we shall claim back in sea!