For Clemmie.

Long sand roads lead
to excitements with buckets and worn spades
crafting barriers to keep the sea away.

With baskets and cotton swimwear
we’d look into the eyes of each other,
lie next to each other,
be with one another.

For men will never drop the need to protect,
nest in the trees and wait for the seas:
the seas that’ll sweep up and rise in your lifetime and,
when they begin, no sewn sort branches will
save you from the swell.

Picnics made from grocery store vegetables,
ripened peppers flown in from
the greater somewhere.

Take to the skies, you’ll ask those in the know,
but they’re out of ideas before an answer materialises and is known and
snow won’t fall no more, just ice for our sidewalk commutes,
lovely and unfilled;
it’ll take a large span of time for a man to build a sand barrier worthy of note and fame.

*You take me back 63 years
every time I look at you.