End of Summer (prose poem)

We walked along the shore, from the Swampscott border all the way to the far end of Nahant Beach, floating and bobbing like we were in a wooden boat, our fingers trailing the water, making a wake that spread out behind us like the summer. Suddenly we understood that we were walking the sun home. The light dimmed, our legs ached, but still we pressed on, not wanting to say goodbye so soon. We sat, finally, on one of the cement benches along the beach, let the dog play with a piece of seaweed, black and dry and dead, watched the sun cast a golden glow on the spit of land that is Nahant, that foreign body left behind by glacial ice that reached the end of its journey a million years ago. The tall wooden lifeguard stand lay tipped over in the sand. We righted ourselves as dusk gathered around. And then we started back, the beach behind us, the crisp, cool, dark of the night ahead.