The Years of Missing Men

If I was mad and impulsive,
I’d book a ticket to Florida.
And return to the taste
Of salt and humidity
That I remember first.

Snarling gray waves.
Hot sand and treasured bits of shells.
And the need for my father
Who swam out so far
Into the mouth of the beast
I started to weep within and call out,
Please don’t leave me.

As if I knew then,
Of the leaving that would happen
A few years on. Beginning on that
Beach in Florida where I was
Small and first lost.

If I was mad and impulsive
And less like me,
I’d return there and reclaim
From the Atlantic
What started the years of missing men.