I face the clot of horizon, feet sunk deeper
in every wake, to consider the ocean. How
she moves—laps forward. The whole going
nowhere. Her body lifts. Foil
from a cookout, the Clorox bottle cap,
Barbie’s head, a synthetic belt, and, yes,
the loose top-layer of sand, before settling
it all down again. Cradle of her
ridges. Perhaps when I’m older I will stop
trying so hard to remember
a future without me in it. I find
I long for another shore, overcast
verge of a deeper shade, the half-grain
finer grit. My heels soft plums again.
I think of my daughter’s face turned
up and her small fingers. I see
my full round palm, their cup.
Between the limestone crag and sea,
we catch shells, break-thrown jetsam
in the bed of our plastic bucket. Sometimes
I see also myself at the waterline,
split in two. There on the narrow wash
of sandbar with her in tow. But also there
fixed, inching under into the ground’s
slow swallow. The sweet astringence. I enter
this other time—sour cut of fruit
between front teeth. I lock my muscles here
in that tender bite. If my mother is right, this is fated.
Faith—a preservation like the wholeness
of a blue bottle cap parting a century of sand—
let algae soon devour it. All that plastic,
shrink it to small remains. Nourish
a future I long to be homesick for.