Children, the Sandbar, That Summer

Sunlight the tall women may never have seen.

Men, perhaps, going headfirst into the breakers,

but certainly the children at the sandbar.

Shallow glints in the wave suspended

we knew at the breaker line, running that shore

at low tide, when it was safe. The grasses

whipped

and nothing was what they said: not safety,

nor the sea.

And the sand was not what they said, but

various,

lion-grained, beard-gold, grey. And blue. And

green.

And each grain casting its shadow down before

childhood in tide-pools where all things are food.

Behind us the shores emerged and fed on tide.

We fed on summer, the round flowers in our

hands

from the snowball bush entered us, and prisoner

wings,

and shells in spirals, all food.

All keys to unlock

some world, glinting as strong as noon on the

sandbar,

where men and women give each other children.