John Schneider

Eden

Along the waning Santa Monica shoreline,
         the children forge castles from sand

and fill them with transient dreams
         that tower Babel-like toward the heavens.

Suddenly, everything is possible. How such
         tiny hands can sculpt sublime structures

from sodden earth with a mother’s tenderness.
         In the morning, as dawn devours their stars,

our children return convinced their beloved
creations will still be there.

And we can still hear the disappointment in their cries.
The place that just yesterday held them

now empty air, a tuneless dirge, what was promised
         scattered conchs echoing only ocean.

The wrong kind of home. So often the wrong kind
         of home. The ones they’ll hopefully never grow up into.

John Schneider lives in Berkeley, California. His debut collection, Swallowing the Light, is forthcoming in 2022 from Kelsay Books. His work has been published in The Worcester Review, Tampa Review,The Inflectionist Review, The American Journal of Poetry, California Fire and Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology, and elsewhere. His poetry has been a Merit Award winner in the Atlanta Review 2021 International Poetry Competition He is also a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee.