A beach, hot Carolina, we were there,
my dad under blue umbrellas
breast-pocketed and me on the sand
looking up and sideways. the
ocean wound itself against thighs like
the making of yarn, very finite. I was
against his leg, younger than five—before the
epoch- and world-again
of the child becoming, her brain spitting through
her moonlit nose. Before the law had done its work.
Dad was telling me "five, ten fifteen
twenty, negative twenty-five,
negative thirty
—Oops!
there I go into the negative
world again." ticklish—somewhere on this
beach there must be a clock. I felt for it in his hair.
I asked him, today, if he remembers, and he doesn't, I do,
He remembers the ocean, being older, being the father, see;
fifty, fifty-five, sixty, till he goes negative again.
And, didn't I tell you, once? Late night, dialed up
bodiless on a server rack in Utah
that has been replaced years ago.
Of sand: It felt like there used to be more
than what there now is.