For David Kennis and his grandson
Walking on another beach
On another ocean, in another time
You asked me what I meant
When I said
“The ocean has sea gull eyes.”
I wasn’t really sure.
But your undivided interest
Was a challenge and a dare.
“It’s not human,” I said. “It doesn’t care.”
You nodded.
“You have a spark,” you said.
And I felt the ember glowing
With your breath.
Feeling death in the dark water,
We stopped to stare into the moonlit Pacific
Standing together on the cold sand
Under the crust of stars
As the surf rumbled beyond us
In the dark
We walked the beach often that summer
Sand flicking from our toes
At the water’s edge,
Walking to the pier and back,
Cheating the tide.
One day we watched a stunt man
Parachute into the ocean
He was working on some movie
We found out that night he had died
Tangled in his nylon straps
Drowning before help could arrive
And I thought of Sarah
Loved across the tragic gulf of a decade
(She was in her twenties; I was fifteen)
Who had nearly drowned,
Swimming in the storm surf
A few weeks before—
Fighting the rip tides
Finally crawling onto the beach
On her hands and knees
Gasping
You went to help her
You held her in your arms
Battered but safe
I take my son’s hand, thirty years later
On the wide Atlantic shore
Just him and me
Without the glamour
Of a rare anointed moment:
Just another walk on the beach
The familiar small hand in mine.
Today we came to see the whale
That washed ashore to die last weekend
A hulking mystery
An Easter Island statue
Pecked at by the gulls,
Finally carted away
My son asks me, why did he do it?
I cannot say
But these shoals are famous for shipwrecks.
I tried to call you tonight
The number is still in my phone
As if you were still stalking the deck at dawn
Sipping the first drink of the day
As if the house had not been sold to strangers
Real estate brokers mingling with mourners
At the wake.
My mistake—
The number has been disconnected.
I dial it anyway, now and then,
As if you might pick up and say
“Dear boy, it’s after ten
No one civilized calls at this hour.”
And my son, calling me
Years from now
Just to chat,
“Are you keeping warm?
Did you lose power in the last big storm?
Did you hear Vampire Weekend’s new song?”
I’ll keep him on the phone too long.
Maybe he’ll remember that,
Some decades still further on
Hiking some other beach
Feeling a little boy clasping his hand
As if he’ll never let go,
Feeling his own heart lift and fall
Knowing there’s no one left he can call
To describe it.
—From The Whale on the Beach and Other Poems, Push-rake Press, 2020