The snow was falling on the beach
and so the children

gathered it
into their hands.

They mixed white sand and whiter frost

into balls of light
and threw them. I watched

a girl’s eye drift naked among the tide.
I watched the evening give way

to the boulevard.

And when the snow moved
inland, I became scared

for them, of how this will seem
in memory,                      if this was happiness,

and if it were me, what might this

have meant. How unreal

seems a child’s mind, these brief comets
smoldering

at my feet.

 

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