I’ll find him on the ocean break.
It’s where I see him best.
Sixty-something, hale and free.
Gray hair nearly white with age
And pink across his chest.
Great big belly, pearly white
Rising up on a blue-green sea.
Finer than a fine gull’s breast,
No tubes yet, and no restraints,
No tracheostomy.
He taught me how to float, y’know.
Tummy toward the sky. To ride
Each wave and go without a care
For swells gone by.
He must ha’ descended from
A Donegal boatman’s son.
Through fair and foul he’d drift.
I’ll see him so until the day
My own poor swim is done.
I’ll find him on the ocean break.
It’s where I see him best.
Sixty-something, hale and free.
Gray hair nearly white with age.
And come about for me.
Rob Burnside, a yearly visitor to Edgartown, is a retired firefighter and published poet (Chapbook “Falling Off the Bone” currently available on Amazon) from Swoyersville, Pennsylvania.