Where It All Goes Down
Our speaker and his girlfriend are hanging out on the strand—also known as the beach. We're not picturing a Caribbean island here. Our pals probably aren't chilling in Jamaica with little umbrellas in large piña coladas.
Picture them instead on a British beach. It might be a little cold, maybe a little blustery, probably more than a little rocky. Picture our speaker picking up a big piece of driftwood, and scrawling his lady's name in the rocky sand.
There, that's more like it. The beach is the perfect setting for this poem, because these waves provide an easy (not to mention, a popular) metaphor for the circle of life—the waves coming in, the waves going out. There's no stopping nature (and, no stopping death). The lone exception? This speaker's art, which (he guarantees) will outlast puny things like waves and time.
Can't you feel the cool wind, the whispers of immortality? Yeah, we didn't think we left that window open.