twenty

I'll count to twenty by taking off my shoes
and tromp into the littoral
wary of glass still unworn

wondering if we would still hold hands
on your twentieth birthday
while splashing the only wet salt

our faces would need
in two decades of birthday beaching
I wished we had.

I have so many questions of you
that only wise youth could answer:
what float would you toss your brother

with his mouth just above water?
would you vote next year
against the onrushing tide?

how did these years drift past and fast
into this hollow belly
while you still dust an urn

and I'm just dust with out you?

.....

.....

a doubled 55 for Verse Escape on the 20th anniversary of my daughter's birth, and death