Clamming

Dear Anne and Emily,

You look for signs of life in the sand. Small indentations of movement, breath. Then you dig and dig as Grandma Kathy taught you.

You pose next to Grandma with your tools for digging. Emily wears her Middle School Choir shirt. Anne holds a clam in her hand. Next year she will join the middle-school band. Mom wears her sweatshirt from the Monterrey Bay Aquarium where we watched an Octopus write its poems on glass, where no one forgets the rarely seen seahorses, where trombones slide their tears down long white sleeves to the sea.

Love,

Dad