Here’s your grandson clowning in the ocean;
scuttling out of the waves then bossing them back.
He looks more like you every minute;
beetling his brow in the same mock frown you made.
Here’s a hammock without you lying in it;
a sea-grape tree without you in its shade.
And here’s me, taking the measure of your absence;
failing again; stalled like that restless palm top
flapping its chicken feathers in the sun
while overhead some wide-winged ocean bird
rises on the breezes without effort
as if to tell me: this is how it’s done . . .