for Brewton

I’ll always remember that decadent Beach Week with a dozen of us on Isle of Palms

in a couple houses drinking the last lees of college life before graduation with

house parties & beer pong battened on smoked meats wafting up to Dionysus

then stumbling down to the beach late at night to howl across the great maw

of the Atlantic that had swallowed so many less entitled souls & us gaping up

at the stars imagining which luminaries would comprise our own constellation

someday probably soon & then that one night we waded out into the tide

then P. picked you up playfully & threw you broadside into a breaker & you

emerged with a twisted look on your face saying the heirloom wristwatch

from your grandfather had unlatched in the surf & oh shit we gang of drunken sailors

all sobered up right quick & all hands organized a search net of appendages plying

the coast’s mushy darkness for the slightest feel of heritage because we all had

or had had grandfathers & knew their bequests were hard as salvation to come by

& I remember being absolutely certain we’d find it because I’d not yet known life

where things didn’t work out & the world didn’t leave you marooned with scuttled dreams

& I still feel the cannonball in my stomach when avast the search was called

without anyone singing out hallelujah or ahoy & I just want you to know

I’m so very sorry we never found your watch & even now decades later I will stand

on a coast & survey the surf feeling that loss briefly shiver up the timbered knots

of my spine like a sailor scouring the sea who solely sees shipwrecks.