The Children

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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Timothy Daniel Welch

Timothy Daniel Welch received his PhD from Florida State University and his MFA from San Diego State University. Originally from Orange County, California, he now lives happily in Madison, Wisconsin after being awarded the 2013-14 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Creative Writing. He currently teaches at Blackhawk Technical College in Janesville, and his poems may be found in Rattle, Arts & Letters, and Best New Poets.

Latest posts by Timothy Daniel Welch (see all)

• The Children - August 5, 2015