Last Sandcastle

My dad taught me how to build a sandcastle

on the beach at Tybee Island.

We dug a trench in the sand

to serve as a moat before the castle, which resembled a lighthouse.

My dad was smoking a cigarette, occasionally flicking the ashes

into the wind at low tide.

I remember getting upset, crying when the tide

came in and swept away my very first sandcastle,

my ideas of permanence in ashes,

knowing light would never come to my lighthouse

dissolving into lumps of wet sand.

We spent the whole day in the sand,

watching ships and the tide

in the shadow of the lighthouse,

building my dad’s last sandcastle

where I built my first, Tybee Island.

But this castle contained my dad’s ashes.

I had to beat my sister to the funeral home to get his ashes

so he could go home to the ocean from the sand,

here on his favorite island.

I didn’t want to just dump him in the ocean; I wanted him to be taken by the tide,

What was left of his body housed in the transience of my sandcastle,

between the ocean and his favorite lighthouse.

He served in the Navy and loved lighthouses—

fire without ashes,

Safety and permanence shining their beacon over the sandcastles,

assuring sailors of terra firma beyond the sand,

The warm light on the cold water, soothing as the tide

gently coming ashore without drowning the island.

They say no man is an island,

but maybe my dad was, or maybe he was my lighthouse,

standing sentinel, waiting for me to return, like the tide,

where I now swim in his ashes;

the sea took them from the sand,

each wave coming closer and closer, the ocean claiming the sandcastle.

I brought him to this island in ashes

to lay him to rest in front of the lighthouse, return him to salt water and sand.

a king made of ashes in his last sandcastle.

I wanted to say more when I finished the sestina. I planned on continuing it, but haven’t yet.