Things your father gave you:
Eyesockets. The bones that frame
bottles full of the grey white ocean.
Black hair. Tangles like kelp.
The shape your foot forms in
the wet sand beside conch shells.
A sand dollar, a fish hook.
A memory like fog: cold salt,
wet hair on a man’s long legs,
white teeth in a black kelp beard.
A nightmare: a ship on the horizon
that never comes to harbor,
even during storms.
Especially during storms.
This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.
