SAM
WHEN Sam goes back in memory.
It is to where the sea
Breaks on the shingle, emerald-green,
In white foam, endlessly;
He says — with small brown eye on mine—
"I used to keep awake.
And lean from my window in the moon,
Watching those billows break.
And half a million tiny hands,
And eyes, like sparks of frost,
Would dance and come tumbling into the moon.
On every breaker tossed.
And all across from star to star,
I've seen the watery sea.
With not a single ship in sight,
Just ocean there, and me;
And heard my father snore. And once,
As sure as I'm alive.
Out of those wallowing, moon-flecked waves
I saw a mermaid dive;
Head and shoulders above the wave,
Plain as I now see you,
Combing her hair, now back, now front,
Her two eyes peeping through;
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