Mother was there.
I didn’t know she did drugs
except for pain relief, at the end.
We were on a beach. The beach.
The sand was a deeper, richer
brown. The water
clear as liquid glass.
Minnows, sea wrack; offshore,
the basking sharks, a whale procession
from the Sargasso.
I asked, A beach?
She said, You grew up by a beach.
I said, You know that never happened
and I’ve stopped waiting.
But the colours were never this intense.
The sky did not shimmer.
The iron railings painted cream
were never this solid, and the ice cream
— it was bricks then, between two wafers —
was amazing.
She said, I dreamed it was 10:22,
and when I awoke it was 10:22.
The seagulls wheeled, the buildings
marched along the top of the cliffs,
the small flags fluttered.
Am I dead now? I asked.
She said, Yes, you
and all the other sons of beaches
unless you wake up to this.
And gravity turned plastic, a toy.
A crow came for the wafer crumbs,
said, Guard your caw strength.
The sun burned sepia over the Purbecks.
I said, This isn’t you, you don’t cuss.
Or pun. At least, you didn’t.
She giggled. She said,
All the things you do not know.
She said, It’s getting dark now.
So long, sun.
And I woke up.
It was 10:24.
What did I miss?