The Birthday Party

The sounds are the sea, breaking out of sight,
and down the green slope the children's voices
that celebrate the fact of being eight.
One too few chairs are for desperate forces:
when the music hushes, the children drop
into their arms, except for one caught by choices.
In a circle gallops the shrinking crop
to leave a single sitter in hubris
when the adult finger tells them: stop.
There is a treasure, somewhere easy to miss.
In the blooms? by the pineapple-palms' bark?
somewhere, hidden, the shape of bliss.
Onto the pitted sand comes highwater mark.
Waves older than eight begin a retreat;
they will come, the children gone, the slope dark.
One of the gifts was a year, complete.
There will be others: those not eight
will come to be eight, bar a dire defeat.
On the green grass there is a delicate
change; there is a change in the sun
though certainly it is not truly late,
and still caught up in the scary fun,
like a muddle of flowers blown around.
For treasure, for triumph, the children run
and the wind carries the steady pound,
and salty weight that falls, and dies,
and falls. The wind carries the sound
of the children's light high clear cries.