i still think of the killdeer and the shingling.
i want you to know this, if you know
nothing else, that i have not forgotten
the small contours of then, sandy towels
and the red exhaustion of beach day’s wake,
all that vibrant thrumming little muscle
in my child’s vessel rocked to sleep
by my own jubilant exertion. i remember
all the plover, and the lichens, the shaved ice,
the hush of saltpeter in the dragon spine
at Luray, where they buried my grandfather,
and the cabanas, and the little green army men
you’d find beneath them with the crab husks,
and the lighter bedtimes, and grandfather
straightforwardly drinking summer ale with fish.
i do; i remember rubber floats and wall unit air
and finding out about legionnaires’ disease
and breathing it anyway. but most of all
i remember the killdeer, their little bandy legs
carrying them smoothly across the sand
of my home, so swift and so small, leaving
just a brushstroke or a shadow, an idea of themselves.
