Along a Beach

Here is a poem lacking rhythem that entails beaches. And morals.

Once upon a time
in a land akin to this one,
there lived a being, understand,
with a conniving passion at the sea.

It wanted to count the grains of sand,
that so cluttered about the seashore,
and rambled in from the deepest of depths,
riddled with assortments of shells and creatures.

A life's work it would become,
but it was set in its ways,
and pulling on trowsers,
from its family it farewell bade.

It began by cupping the sand
within its hands, counting the grains with its eyes,
but when this did not work, he found a board,
and decided from this to derive.

From here it kept a tally,
of all the counted grains,
upon a sheet of wax paper
(all the better -- it wouldn't taper)
writing with a stylus of octopus ink.

It grew the wiser,
and less a miser,
as it began to bag the sand;
and with the passage of time,
so too did fall the beach level,
with the sagging grassy knoll,
aside the bareing shoreline.

Yet more time slipped away,
and there it was, anyway,
growing older, set so in its ways;
it would not stop until the grains
would drop, to nothing more that.

And here at last, it was,
its once clean trousers tattered,
a beard several miles long, growing upon its gaunt face;
the beach was no more, but the sandless sea rolling into its sandless banks,
each grain counted and tallied.
The man smiled and died.

But here the question remains:
what should happen after the wax paper degrades into the ocean,
as it did?
Who will know of this limbless stride?
For the man was just that -- human indeed,
and imperfect --
we never should attempt the impossible.