July 2024
Bio Note: It's summer here on the Atlantic coast - which means tourists and hurricane preparations, both of which have inspired my poems. My poetry book, To Drink from a Wider Bowl, came out in 2022, and my chapbook, On Shifting Shoals - all about living at the ocean - in 2023.
Hurricane
The day before, the waves spill
the sea’s incantation – come rest
in this gentle promise,
the seagulls dismiss the ocean’s
song, fly towards the storm’s eye
to settle inside
its womb and spiral where it wills them.
Wingless, we will ride the other way,
unencumbered
like the birds, having learned to lean
on lightness, only bearing
my bag of journals,
your ukulele, the Navajo sand painting
that hangs above our bed – earth holding
hands with sky,
earrings from everywhere I’ve been,
my hard-bound Leaves of Grass,
spine half chewed
by my childhood dog, but no words
lost. A week’s worth of clothes. The rest
replaceable,
we could start again with different pots.
If we didn’t find heavy cast iron,
the lighter versions
are still dependable
for sealing in the goodness
of what serves us well.
from On Shifting Shoals, (Kelsay Books 2023)
At Ocean's Edge
as the last lip of wave licks her feet
a twelve-year-old picks up a conch,
shows it to her grandmother, standing
close with familiar ease. Fingers linger
on its fanned smoothness. The older
woman rolls it over, jagged edges
missing their spiral core. With a sudden
jerk, the girl laughs, Oh, it’s cracked!
and tosses it back into the sea. She’s just
this week the taller of the two. Beneath
the brim of hat that used to shield
them both, the grandmother sighs,
feet sinking into broken treasures
that line the shore.
First published in Third Wednesday Magazine
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