The second line moves one step nearer the water that Hexagram 5 holds suspended above Heaven. Where the meadow of the first line is open ground untouched by the risk to come, sand is the visible edge of the crossing, close enough that the situation is no longer wholly abstract. The line texts keep to a topographical sequence used across renderings of this hexagram, a set of six locations that grow steadily nearer the water: meadow, sand, mud, blood, the ceremonial meal, and finally the pit itself. At the sand, the line text allows for some talk against the one waiting, minor criticism from onlookers impatient with delay, but no real harm follows it.
The formula is deliberately mild: there will be gossip, not danger. This is the register of Hexagram 5 as a whole, which treats waiting not as passive helplessness but as an active, disciplined choice that outsiders may misread as hesitation or weakness. Line two shows that the cost of that misreading is only reputational and only minor, provided the person waiting does not let the criticism provoke a premature move toward the water. Composure under mild social pressure, rather than composure under real danger, is what this particular station in the hexagram asks for.