Summer night but that’s no excuse I could
Whisper what I think until dawn and still
The misheard words, a distraction, then lost.
Decades on this same beach, but not
Like this, the way it is.  After you
Are gone, after dark and then later I
Drop to my knees in the sand and ask
The sand to remember when we were
Here and each wave pronounced our names.

Joseph Mockus is a writer, poet, criminal defense attorney, dad, husband, and rock ‘n roll drummer.  Joe has published in the small university press, but generally only when his friends submit his work, which is never rejected.  It is only because Joe taught your editor-in-chief how to really read literature (standing in front of a dart-board on Turquoise Street in Pacific Beach sometime in 1975 or 1976) that we have the r.kv.r.y. quarterly literary journal at all.