Waterline

Reparations

2012-01-15T15:49:00.000-08:00

Some things never change
people are who they are
at their core
it is only now
past the mid-point of life
that we question
past actions
and hard consequence
wonder if paths chosen
led us too far astray
or to exactly where
we were meant to be
all along.

We ask those
we have hurt
for forgiveness
sometimes granted
often withheld
it is up to us
to put our demons
to final rest
like recalcitrant children
with tenderness
lest they rise
and consume
our souls.

Is it selfish
to ask another
to excuse
past transgressions?
One more instance
of taking
rather than giving?
An attempt to soothe
the raw ache
consuming our bones
knowing
we've done another
an injustice?

Best to absolve
exonerate the guilty
set us all free
to hold pain
overfills the vessel
perpetrator and victim
awash in the same
liquid shame
spill this sorrow
out into the world
let it become
a drop
in the vast ocean.

Sun

2011-10-17T16:21:00.001-07:00

All I've known
of love
has been bound
by duty, expectation
filaments of need

golden moments
of being
recognized
a rare flicker
in the darkness.

I sought
a nameless place
where one could
defy the laws
of gravity

held captive
simply
by the radiance
of a rising sun
between us.

Yearning

2011-08-29T15:43:00.000-07:00

Songs and poems
jars of jam
offered up
like jewels
obscure allusions
of longing
for love

we hide
the truth
behind gestures
and cryptic brail
scratches on walls
our lonely hearts
cannot decipher.

Quiet

2011-08-04T14:20:00.000-07:00

The quiet river
whispers
undulating
in its fertile bed
the smooth current
barely a ripple
on transparent silk
spread softly over
algae-draped rocks.

The wind rises
alder leaves bare
silver bellies
to the sun's welcome
blessing
as I count mine
they are many
for I have learned
the value of gratitude.

Fighting what is
leads nowhere
it does not matter
which eddy
pulls me to shore
I have let go
control, an illusion
held beyond all reason
fear, time wasted.

Better to be the leaf
weightlessly floating
then drawn below
caressing stones
worn smooth by time
rising again
to glide unresisting
on the gilded light
of evening.

Statewide

2011-07-16T18:32:00.000-07:00

This road trip sours
with each tire rotation
through the Walla Walla valley
dressed in verdant silk,
past the pulp mill billowing
noxious clouds into the air,
on the wide sweep of freeway
embracing the Tri Cities sprawl,
during the slow cruise-control glide
past Yakima's ubiquitous troopers,
rising to the desolate sage
wasteland of the Army Firing Range.

Miles accumulate
on my soul and heart,
even Ellensburg unfolding
green and lovely, rimmed
by the serrated Stuart Range,
does not dispel their weight.

The rest stop at Elk Heights
swarms with holiday travelers
unfolding stiffly from vehicles,
tottering off to pee and stretch
before continuing West,
fish-scale clouds fan out
from the front settling
on the Summit, rain
descends, accenting
the clench in my gut

brought on by a long day
spent thinking how love
may not be enough
when resolve has seized up
like one of those cheap
toy cars, over-wound
until broken.

Jain

2011-04-04T05:49:00.000-07:00

This morning I am
a Jain practicing ahimsa
weaving meticulously around
thousands of fog-kissed webs
a minute world visible to eyes
no longer willfully blind.

Each dwelling is self-contained
woven into surrounding crabgrass
trees to the tiny inhabitants
crouching cozy beneath
fluttering canopies sparking
rainbows in the lifting light.

Revisionist History

2011-02-15T12:34:00.000-08:00

How easy to distill the past,
sifting out impurities
so a clean silky edge
will soothe another’s tongue.

Serve up what flatters,
spit out distasteful lapses; swallow
raw memories and let them sink
into our tender parts

deep into the silted
heart of gray.

The lies we
tell each other,
tell ourselves.

We are all revisionists
editing our histories, omissions
catered to the prevailing
whims of taste and culture

until intimacy unmasks us.

Poem From an Other

2010-07-05T06:13:00.000-07:00

When my heart is hollow
and jagged synonyms
for grief, loss, pain
tumble from my eyes

when there is no comfort
in old routines
and everyday objects
become waiting landmines

when even simple kindness
disturbs the surface
I have worked
so hard to calm

I turn to you, favored poet
but find you busy
constructing verbal walls
to keep the rabble out.

With my finger I trace
book-jacket photo
lines of worry carved
on your bald head

to fear
your own voice
might not be heard
above the dissonance.

Have you forgotten?

Self-expression
is a lonely highway
traveled by many
owned by no one

where accolades
provide no fuel
but true words
freely given do.

Foreign Object

2010-06-01T05:35:00.000-07:00

My soul is ancient metal, containing all the secrets of the universe, if it would only speak.

I orbit another; longing for my own gravitational pull, rate of rotation, my own elliptical relationship with the sun.

I am a verdant streak in the summer sky, a slash in the atmosphere of a larger body.

I wait at the edge of obscurity, while those who understand little about me decide if I am worth naming.

The truth is, I will never be known.
The truth is, I have always been known.

We are linked in ways beyond all knowing.

Intention

2010-05-25T06:41:00.000-07:00

I wish I had
my daughter's forgiving heart
my son's radar sensitivity

the ability to start over
without remembering wounds
inflicted by barbed remarks
allegedly untainted with intent
to harm or inflame old arguments

but my heart believes intention
presages any interaction
words, the concrete bridge
to a truth from which
the soul cannot hide

Flame

2009-07-05T14:19:00.000-07:00

I wake with tears
drying on my cheeks
Douglas firs lob cones
at the roof like shrapnel
rain needles impassive
window faces
storms attempt
to shatter.

To hold fast is never a given
wind can shift and knock you
from your complacent perch
shallow protection against
the inevitable creep of age
and treacherous doubt gnawing
at our ability to affect change
in ourselves, each other, the world.

And yet
these very words
spark faint rebellion
for without imagining
there can be no future
without love, no one
to cup a tender palm
around this wavering flame
not yet extinguished.

Rooftop Views

2008-06-24T08:05:00.000-07:00

Meteors slash the black fabric
night, trailing green and gold
summer heat fading
drowsy children pillow
into shoulder creases
content beneath the universal roof

shingles grind into skin
like iron-justified habits
cool starlight in blue veins
what temptation holds sweet surrender
to shutter eyes with scales of forgetting
to blaze like a meteor into darkness.

Soot Birds

2008-02-02T07:49:00.000-08:00

Fire-cloud soot bird
wings westward
blood red tail shadowing
ponderosa, lodge pole, aspen
helpless before the heat-driven beast.

Bronze-winged sisters circle low
over wheat fields where dust devils
vortex wildly, building speed until
they run out of dirt and disappear
like genies, back to the air

transmuted

the earth is the tree
is the fire is the smoke
destruction, the vortex
death, the rebirth.

Monk in Hiking Boots

2008-01-23T09:40:00.001-08:00

He is
walking the white line
his arm a repetitious arc
sounding
a single tone
timed to the pace
of hiking-booted feet
treading the pavement.

Saffron robes have grayed
over long meditative miles
witnessed by curious commuters
riding the pendulum away
from his purposeful daily counterpoint
and the freedom held in rhythmic ritual;
how the mind stills and gathers
in the swinging blur of hand and stick.

I roll the window down
seeking precious solace
as I hurtle past, knowing
he walks for me too.
I want to stop the car
and fall in behind;
feel the timeless drum,
the stillness of salvation.

Cocoon

2007-12-11T15:04:00.000-08:00

A fat, false-eyed caterpillar consumed Liberty
inexorably, leaf-by-leaf, stripped her bare
leaving a hardened chrysalis-nation spinning
hypnotically in a chill global wind.

Beneath layered fear and isolation
truth and freedom have been transformed
into a black, all-knowing moth
with wings wide enough
to obliterate dissention.

Driving

2007-12-01T12:16:00.000-08:00

We think the past vapor, faded
ghosts unworthy of resurrection or introspection
dissipating behind us as we speed recklessly
into the future, heads out the window
hair afire, eyes streaming impotent tears of woe and joy.
It doesn’t seem worth the effort to pull over and reflect
far easier to squander our souls, to taste the black
drag of criticism, ridicule, stale fear, to believe the doubting
chorus singing monotonously in the background
until we arrive in the middle of nowhere, wondering
how we ended up so far from our own truth.
It is in this solitary place we remember
ourselves, unchanged and immutable
cradled delusions evaporate
burning possibility lingers
like sweet, unforgettable perfume.

Story Bracelet

2007-11-06T12:33:00.000-08:00

Bone and walrus tusk
encircle my wrist
in memory of you,
on each square
a scrimshaw picture,
joined, they tell a story:

a hunter leaves home, alone
on the ice, he navigates
the tender under-skin of my arm,
tracks and shoots a seal,
attaches rope and hauls it back
to the polished beginning.

Your story does not circle
it ends in sea and tears;
that day, Grief
took up sharpened antler
and carved your life
into the curve of mine.

Curl

2007-10-24T10:53:00.000-07:00

Each curl of conversation
stills my tongue, half-sentences
stranded in the mire
of biting reason

words silently form
protests, defenses
reasons and intentions

worthless to ears already fed
with the insistent conundrum
accompanying every attempt
at reconciliation.

Old Dog

2007-10-16T12:27:00.000-07:00

He grows more beautiful every day
his wizened face, yellow coat
fading to white. He is both stately
and goofy in equal parts, a loving soul
who never had an enemy, human or beast.

Last fall it was hard to tell he wasn’t a puppy,
now he’s eleven, seventy-seven in dog years,
his hips stiffen during the night and into morning,
though after coffee, he’s still up and begging for a walk.

I put my hand on his chest; feel his heart, gently
rocking under my palm. I whisper in his ear, ask
him to stay with us a while longer -

he sighs, deeply, resonantly.

Cry

2007-07-03T18:51:00.000-07:00

Tears
deemed too self-indulgent
discipline the set of my jaw

At the crosswalk, a teenage boy
scans both ways, nervously
waiting for cars to notice him

planted solidly on the other side,
she holds the tether of her love
as an invisible guide

eyes locked, he launches
off the curb and rapidly tastes
a hard-won sliver of freedom

he is taller than the woman,
a little boy in a man’s body, his arm
around her shoulder, his smile a blessing

joyful
reason enough
to cry.

Mourning Cloak

2007-06-20T10:11:00.000-07:00

The thaw begins with a drip,
builds to a roar, subsides to sunlight
prisms playing over silver eddies

brushing still-wet velvet wings;
maroon and yellow, neon blue,
pseudo-bark underneath

in the clear-cut, pink fireweed
pierces a sky alive with souls
reveling in their last year on earth

sampling nectar with newly-curled
tongues while summer degrades
to fall, burrowing in the cool

damp cord of fir put up for winter,
awakening in spring, tasting early
summer before the reprieve

is over, time come to fold
worn and battered wings, to slip
free of this mourning cloak and rise.

Faith

2007-06-10T08:05:00.001-07:00

Cormorants face east
to blood-rimmed clouds
holding the morning hostage

angled wings await
silver resonance humming
through weighted bone,
bound by eternally rising sun.

Azure Spring

2007-06-06T18:23:00.000-07:00

sun dries pale
whorled wings

the breeze teases
elevating blue

spring rises
yellow and hazy

with sex, frantic
primal propagation

a brief flush
of perfect intensity

Myths, Lies and Instant Karma

2006-10-06T15:22:00.000-07:00

In my son’s karate class, his Sensei warned a student
who had kicked his sparring partner a little too robustly
that it would soon be his partner’s turn and he just might
experience some rather painful instant karma.

The adults all laughed, but I’ve been thinking
about it since, how the older we get the more
we think we can control karma by delaying
or preventing its arrival, when in actuality
all we do is dull the impact or deny its existence,
ultimately making little difference in the outcome,
because another name for karma is cause and effect;
A occurs; B follows; it’s hard to avoid laws of nature.

As children, we learned our lessons the hard way;
if you licked the frost-chipped metal on the monkey
bars, it would rip your tender taste buds clean off
as you panicked and tried to reverse, when you fell
off the wooden swing and sat up just as it came sailing
back, a whole day’s worth of memories, erased in an instant
as the three-inch thick board cracked you upside the head.

When you kept poking your brother in the back seat
of the car while your mother yelled at you to quit it
or she was going to pull over, she really was, but you kept
going at it until she really did, making you get a switch
from a roadside tree yourself and bend over to take your instant
karmic punishment while your sisters and brothers snickered
at you from the rearview window of the beige VW wagon.

Those were the days, weren’t they? We understood full well
if we kept pushing it, something would eventually give
and we would pay for our lack of judgment, but lately it seems
we've forgotten. It’s all about sneaking by, cheating fate,
hoping we won’t be found out; but really, who are we fooling?

Certainly not our own souls and I bet God’s not buying our act either.

2006-09-23T07:38:00.000-07:00

Marsha Hollingsworth

Clarity

2006-09-23T07:13:00.000-07:00

As elusive as the Pleiades on a moonless
night, the sky flawless and still
you have to look away to glimpse
the truth illuminating the periphery.

Brief, lucid moments accumulate
like pollen from the old cedar leaning
to the silver shore, the fleeting light.

Storms, born on remote continents,
march over the hissing sea in wave
after wave of cloying despair.

Now is the time for clarity:

something inside us must
shift and open.

2006-09-14T10:03:00.000-07:00

Marsha Hollingsworth

When Expectations Meet Reality

2006-09-14T09:54:00.000-07:00

You are too accommodating,
it’s like there's a sign on your forehead
I AM RIPE FOR THE PICKING

helpfulness; a transmuted sign
of weakness, small advantages taken,

leaving you
unmoored, wondering
why you even care.

2006-07-11T08:02:00.000-07:00

Marsha Hollingsworth

Blossoms

2006-07-11T07:57:00.000-07:00

Forty-eight floors, a god’s-eye view

A man practices tai-chi on a tired patch of grass;
he is measured, beautiful.

Families rest under new-green trees
in Yoyogi Park this early spring Sunday.

Mt. Fuji rises like a myth, fading
to illusion in the gathering smog.

A few inches can be an uncrossable sea

we sit, silently contemplating discord
and the meaningless reasons for it.

Last week, freshly opened
cherry blossoms painted the city pink,
now, faded petals cyclone at our feet.

Tears, fleeting as sakura,
bloom and fall.

2006-06-04T07:44:00.000-07:00

Laurie Belanus Odell

Weeding

2006-06-04T07:34:00.000-07:00

You must begin early, while it is cool
and your head clear, your discernment
a sharpened tine, probing the rocky darkness
for all things latent and destructive.

Be aware that the velvet sageness
of the leaves belies their power
to take over every space, remember
roots burrow deep, anchoring in
crevasses we don’t even know exist.

It is vital that you delve as close
to the origin as possible, or the weed
you think eradicated will bide its time,
germinating in the still secret ground,
waiting for the light of inevitable scrutiny
to penetrate the moist earth, waking the sprout
who voraciously pushes up and out, a curled
blemish in your otherwise carefully tended garden.

The Hazards of Tunneling

2006-04-18T07:36:00.000-07:00

All good escapists
perfect distance before
wielding the tools necessary
for subterranean travel

though palms blister
from repetitious retreat
the clamorous world subsides

down here
the air tastes like whispers
from long-forsaken ghosts.

2006-04-13T14:22:00.000-07:00

Marsha Hollingsworth

Kyoto

2006-04-13T14:07:00.000-07:00

Awake to a slowly beating drum,
morning meditation from Chion-in Temple
drifting up the hill; in the garden,
tiny birds add sweet highs, tuneless ravens
the bass undertone, trees whisper
ancient secrets to the passing breeze.

I am gaijin, a foreigner, but still
I feel the pull of this place.

We stroll the Path of Philosophy,
through massive wood and metalwork gates,
into carefully sculpted gardens, exploring
the seemingly endless number of Buddhist temples
dotting Kyoto, each more lovely than the last.

Quiet Nanzen-Ji is where I feel the most, following
worship-worn steps to a tiny cave-shrine
heady with wet and incense.

We are purified by waterfall spray
before returning the way we came,
voices hushed, buoyed by eternity’s hand.

At the hotel, the lobby is filled with crimson
and saffron, glistening heads and broad smiles
from monks gathered there, we bow to each
other and are one, may it never be forgotten.

The Japanese try hard to remember
from where they came, arriving in busloads
for hanami, cherry blossom viewing,
beneath a revered tree decked out in pink splendor
and lit from below so it radiates surreal, internal light.

We sample Kobe yakitori, soba and corn
grilled over open flame as we flow
through the smiling, celebratory crowd.

We savor what is transitory
as sparks and blossoms whirl,
settling on our hair and skin.

Blades

2006-01-11T09:52:00.000-08:00

I have been heedless,
reckless in my need
for perpetual motion.

Hours, a blurred periphery,
promises, like blades
pointed down
in case I stumbled.

2006-01-08T10:19:00.000-08:00

Laurie Belanus-Odell

God Spot

2006-01-08T09:29:00.000-08:00

*This is an old poem, but the sun has come out today after 19 days of rain, a brief respite before the next storm, but enough to remind me that it is a priviledge to live where I do.

Shoulders hunched, it leans,
riparian limbs reaching to the sea.

This shore I love,
tautly stretched sweep
of rock and heaven top,
aquamarine and evergreen.

Geese squadron low and bank,
announcing imminent arrival,
seeking asylum from the wind
rising in the south.

Despite the falling sky,
I can only be lifted.

I hunger like waves
licking the edge of shore,
to consume

until this land and I
are all and only
here.

I Will

2006-01-02T08:29:00.000-08:00

I will take the time to stop and gaze upon
the burnished chest of the resident hawk,
while I am waiting for the sun to drop
and pastel the watered blue.

I will wait for the mountain to radiate,
for the sea to quiet,
for my heart to steady,
for the return of peace.

I will slowly relinquish control
over my tiny world and set it free,
scattered thoughts flying up
brushing their curved wings against me.

I will remember that despite everything
the land and sea will forever be,
remaining long after we hurt each other,
long after we turn our backs on love.

I will take the time to be still,
moon balanced on my open palm,
the path of blazing light
beckons like the road to heaven.

2005-12-20T13:29:00.000-08:00

Laurie Belanus-Odell

Wintering Over

2005-12-20T13:16:00.000-08:00

A chill wind prepares the land for sleep,
snow-weighted clouds brush golden
stubbled wheat fields and bare clotted earth
laid out in heirloom patchwork stitched
from lean and bountiful years, hand-quilted
like a mother’s lovely, unfolding dream.

Poplar trees with eerily uniform trunks
arranged in perfect symmetrical lines, resist
strictly enforced conformity, their flaming
arms reach for each other, tangle and entwine.

Here, good souls touch down
like wind-blown seeds from distant lands
of sunlit love, fading purple twilight
and midnight blackness, gently
settling in fertile, protected hollows
where possibilities rest and winter-over,
awaiting the time to wake and begin anew.

2005-12-13T14:39:00.000-08:00

Laurie Odell

Chemistry

2005-12-13T14:34:00.000-08:00

I loved the white coat, safety glasses
and foreign names of lab implements;
crucible, beaker, pipette, Bunsen burner,
the acrid smelling, gem-hued powders,
blue flame-lit tubes and cylinders
reducing mystery to elemental ash.

We were real scientists, memorizing
atomic numbers (I no longer remember),
tingling with imminent breakthrough,
though we investigated only the solid,
concrete principles of Chemistry 101.

Learning is like that, fresh to the novice
deciphering phonemes for the very first time,
unraveling the delicate simplicity of haiku,
or trying to connect pinprick constellations
while lying on a mountaintop with a man
you believe you will always love,

love being the ultimate chemical reaction,
fusing a thousand acquired elements
of self and other into a new composite,
amorphous and mutable, yet resilient
enough to flex without disintegrating
into meaningless, random dust.

2005-12-06T13:32:00.000-08:00

Monika Bartsch

Release

2005-12-06T13:24:00.000-08:00

I have become reticent, each year
adding dark to my lightness
I remember vaguely when
I radiated

It was not so long ago

Now a rock, retribution etched,
settles solid on my chest,
I cannot see the feather I once was
drifting from this high place

faith the air beneath me.

Balanced where edge meets air
above the green unfolding
alpine jewels reveal the face
of the goddess sleeping .

Clouds seep ragged,
a softly closing circle,
I am riding the cloud center,
trees dripping bearded lichen

witness my ascent.

2005-11-28T09:40:00.000-08:00

Marsha Hollingsworth

Confidence

2005-11-28T09:34:00.000-08:00

Confidence has worn to translucent skin,
beneath which the inner workings
are on open display

look closely

the gears don’t quite fit together,
resulting in uneven wear
and inconsistent operation.

Alone

2005-11-21T13:31:00.000-08:00

Down the hall
the Petri dish laundry
room cultures mildew
in the moist folds
of sheets and tee shirts

blond dog hair
forms a second carpet
over the existing one
and spattered coffee paints
the kitchen tile mocha.

There is always the question
of dinner, that mindless
repetition, seven days a week
what to make, what to make?
and the dishwasher calls,
needs emptying and feeding.

Sometimes I am dizzy
from this endless routine
and I want to be alone,
not just for an hour or two,

those thin wafers of peace
that dissolve too quickly
on the tongue, dissipating
with the next interruption.

2005-11-14T13:24:00.000-08:00

Marsha Hollingsworth

Revolving Art Gallery

2005-11-14T13:12:00.000-08:00

I am very happy to bring the art of Marsha Hollingsworth to Water Line's art gallery. Marsha was the artist featured in the first book, Movements, published by Water Line Press in 2003. Her striking sumi ink paintings were a perfect fit for the poems, lending depth and beauty to the hand sewn limited edition. Did I forget to mention she is also the talented bookbinder I work with on all of my projects? I admire her for keeping the ancient art of hand sewing and case binding books alive and lovely. She is also a generous and wonderful person.

As with all content displayed here, I ask you to respect copyrights and not reproduce any work without permission of the artist.

Choice

2005-11-14T13:10:00.000-08:00

This brilliant morning
anything is possible

we are limited
only by rigid minds
whose fragile confines

can be vaporized
by choice alone.

2005-11-07T11:41:00.000-08:00

By Monika Bartsch

Revolving Art Gallery

2005-11-07T11:24:00.000-08:00

Please welcome artist Monika Bartsch to Water Line's Revolving Art Gallery. Monika loves to paint and has spent several years taking as many classes as she can to learn more. She also happens to be my mother-in-law and one of the sweetest people I know. Enjoy!

Ambient Light

2005-11-07T11:16:00.000-08:00

Nightfall in Bryce Canyon
unveils a 7.3 magnitude sky,
darker than anywhere
else in North America.

From here,
we gaze millions of light years
into the past.

We memorize the Milky Way, imprint
its studded arc on translucent lids,
capture night behind our veiled eyes.

In Zion, beneath red walls
rising sheer from the river bed,
the Virgin endlessly
tends the stone.

She has molded an oasis
attracting wildlife, songbirds
and millions of tourists
who recreate the very city
we are trying to leave behind.

We trade free dominion to preserve
the canyon, herd onto a shuttle bound
for The Temple of Sinawava,
where we slowly disembark
and shuffle the trail to the Narrows

behind the crowd we rode in with.

When we were young,
we drenched our feet here,
felt small and sacred beneath
these cathedral walls.

Gathering Stones

2005-10-30T10:38:00.000-08:00

He gathered the stones together,
piling them gently on top of each other.
When I asked him why?
he was not wary to share.

He looked at me solid and claimed,
The stones do not like to be alone;
wrought from the belly of their mother,
these loose siblings wish to rest together.

I stopped and leaned down
to view their jumbled repose,
it did not seem so far-fetched
to believe as he did.

I too longed for their smooth
closeness, worn edges touching,
asking nothing but to lie
together in stillness.

2005-10-26T19:35:00.000-07:00

Artist in Residence: Laurie Odell

Immutability

2005-10-26T19:16:00.000-07:00

Water understands immutability.

Water will always be water whether liquid, vapor, ice,
it does not question its vacillations or many moods:

blackened cloud walls
trail rain in wide veils
to the water line

squall waves advance
like desperate soldiers
taking the beach

the sky pink silky and spun
red wisps reflect
upon the silent ebb

naked sand shimmers
under a flooding moon
velvet tide

fog caught in spiny treetops,
the sweet remains of morning
weightless and white

towering indigo walls
erode the crystalline past
into the sea

it is all one to the droplet
effortlessly becoming the ocean.

Shards

2005-10-23T18:53:00.000-07:00

The red flower centered
between exotic curled lines
evokes the smell of old Jaipur,
the Hawa Mahal ~ Palace of the Winds,
where the maharaja’s women once peered
from pink honeycombed windows above streets
overflowing with painted elephants, camels, turbaned men.
A river of color, movement and sound,
from red-dust shrouded sunrise
to ember scorch at the horizon line;
the desert broken only by the organic rise
of dung and mud bricked houses sheltered
by one denuded tree, a mirage of shade.

A cobalt hurricane spiral or vine’s end,
worn too small to ever tell its origins,
its story, the shelf on which it sat.
A fragile immigrant perhaps, hand-carried
from the old country by someone’s mother’s mother.
Whole and admired for a century before
its demise, told with regret-laden mouths,
mother to daughter, daughter to mother,
Oh, I wish we still had that blue bowl, do you
remember? Great grandmother dropped it
when she heard about Johnny.
A circle of memory, come to rest
on this distant curve of beach.

The cream and blue striped shard
could be my grandmother’s coffee cup.
Rimmed brown and lipstick stamped,
sip, then drag on the Benson & Hedges
always attached to her electric-tipped fingers.
The cup was most likely broken in the war
that raged until death parted my grandparents.
Maybe it sailed harmlessly past my grandfather’s shiny
head and hit a rock near the creek, exploding into pieces;
a small token of their fragmented marriage
imbued with a lifetime of regrets, carried to the sea.
Grievance-scrubbed, muted by the journey,
this fragment must be handled with care.

You remember how you focus when searching
for the perfect frosted chip of glass, a glazed
sliver tangled in the eelgrass at your feet?
I found the largest piece this way,
delivered on a tide of need, at the ebb
of an unexpected storm;
a perfect cross, soft edges raised
on a rough slab of terra cotta.
The sun had warmed the worn shape
that nested in my palm like a missing piece,
as my restless fingers traced
down and across, across and down;

asking questions, seeking answers.