On her mother’s porch, I kiss my oldest daughter goodbye. She is weeping. This is a simple pain that places me in my life like a father’s strong hand setting something down on the table. This is not the pain I need books, or a lover’s eyes, to understand, or the pain of my childhood I may never understand. This is simple: a tree falling through the seasons; the whale too hoarse to sing; sand brought back home in the shoes, shaken out on the suburban grass, where it will mistake the sound of cars for the sound of the sea.