Tides A Father's Day Poem

One long ago summer after an all-day drive from Indiana in our station wagon, we arrive at grandma's beach house on the Atlantic.

A dozen laughing men and women put down their highballs and cigarettes to hug us.

They are my father's mother, sisters and their husbands and they engulf my parents as shore birds merge into formations.

We four kids sit on the porch sipping cherry cokes, not speaking, our bodies busy sponging it all up:

this vast watery world,
the merry traffic jam of strangers
who seem to care for my father,
and the sudden levity in his body.

It feels strange in a good way
to see enjoyment on him.
He wears it well.

I like the tiny stars that appear in his eyes.
How his hard mouth breaks into jocularity
at things they say to him.

The ocean thrashes before us on the porch,
a sound like Indiana rain storms.

Suddenly in the moonlight the tide spits out waves
of giant horseshoe crabs that grope forward on the sand.

Black helmuts with 7 tiny hands and feet
barely moving but drawing closer.

The sight so beautiful and foreign
like my father's happiness emerging
from his own deep hidden tides.