My wife sits on the sofa after dinner,
scrolling through some photos of the kids
playing on the sand in Mexico.
She is in the past, the wide beach of it,
the glittering, all-encompassing sea.
It is so easy to get there, so warm,
the ocean so inviting, no wonder
we go so often. I close my eyes
and join her there, the boys laughing
as they race each other into the waves.
And now I go back farther, it’s just
so simple, back to my own father, not
at the seashore, but standing beside me,
his small boy, on a bridge high above
the St. Louis trainyards, great silver snarls
of track uncoiling in the winter sun,
the box cars booming far away, bending
toward the smoky horizon. We watch it all
throbbing and pulsing beneath us, until
my father says it’s time to go.