Sunrise Beach Walks With Daddy in Bradenton

The miracle happened
in the sock department at Sears.
Wake up! Wake up Daddy!
They couldn't find a pulse.
Daddy on the shoescuffed
department store floor,
just after Thanksgiving,
that moment when giftshopping
becomes
"Shop 'til you drop".
Dropped to the floor
and they couldn't find a pulse.

Wake up! Wake up Daddy.
Little,
I used to shake him from sleep
for a walk before dawn
on perfect beach sand,
five-year-old child in slept-on braids,
and my Daddy, who always woke up for me.
Only the sandcrabs were up before us
and the waves tickling beach.
Together we studied the boundary
'tween sea and land,
discovered there was none,
really.

And the sun rose gentle
over sea's distant line,
and Daddy taught me
that horizon was just a word.
There is no line
and there is a line
and we call it horizon.
He told me that the sun
didn't really disappear at night.
It was just the angle of our view,
the limits of our sight.
That there was no sunrise,
and that there was.
Neither of us invoked the word
miracle.
We'd go back for papaya and waffles
with Albert and Jane
(each papaya is not formally a miracle.
nor even is a papaya seed)

Daddy and Mommy
bought a lovely pair of shoes
and had just arrived at the sock department
when he fell to the floor
and they couldn't find a pulse.

He didn't explain to the ambulance attendants
about the boundary between sand and sea
or about sunrises.
He didn't talk about papayas.
He just told them he's a doctor
and knows what he's talking about.
He didn't go to the hospital.
Daddy and Mommy walked home.
And this is the miracle:
That Daddy walked home.
That the sun doesn't rise.
And that the sun rises.
That there is no line
between sand and sea.
And that there is.
And that Daddy is lighting the Chanuka candles tonight.