Let’s sit right here, us just us, on our bed
of scrubbed sand.
We’ll talk without speaking, gaze out on
old man Atlantic,
Watch his energy build into rhythmic waves,
their lives intense but short.
Commitment is in our fingers,
each one of yours entwined in each one of mine.
Behind us the dunes stand cool and collected,
their hair, made of shore grass, dances
To smooth jazz sown into the whispers of the wind.

Remember how we used to laugh at existence and non-
existence because we didn’t know what else to do?
Now I must sit here without you. Last week
I released your ashes on the water’s edge
To recycle your remains with the atoms
of beginning and end.

See, the sand crabs continue to create
their hieroglyphics,
Messages sandpipers and gulls have learned
to interpret and track over millennia.
It’s dusk, isn’t it, and for all the days
that will follow. I reach for your hand.
I want to touch you again, just one more time.
One more time.

Donald Everett Axinn
From Walking Through the Night