For All the Women Who Have Walked Here (history as prompt)

My body is back in Kentucky, but my soul is still integrating a thousand moments of wonder, discovery, and connection from my time in Oregon. My love of the coastal community where I spent most of my time runs deeper than the physical beauty of the landscape. Literally deeper. Below the sand on which I walked, the rubble of a town is buried. Cobblestone streets. Stray pieces of this or that building that somehow escaped the destruction. And indestructible things, like refrigerators, perhaps. I’ve spent the last year immersed in Bayocean’s history and interviewing people who lived there, as well as their adult children (since the vast majority of Bayocean’s former residents have passed away). Their stories, voices, dreams, and losses seemed to swirl about me each time I walked the beach or wandered through the dunes. This poem was inspired by all of that, as well as by a brief encounter with a fellow beach comber.

For All the Women Who Have Walked Here

She walks the beach as if she
knows that she’s alive, holds an agate
between finger and thumb, smiles
to the daylight spilling through.

You walk in the wet, she
tells me, that’s what you do. 
Instructions for rock hounds,
instructions for life—you find your

footing, then learn to love
the waves. I try it, my pockets
filling with treasure,
ocean filling my boots.

The first wave catches me
by surprise. I gasp before
discovering laughter like something
gleaming in the sand.

I know things about this place.
Things you can’t see sitting on the shore. 
I know the names of women who
rose early until their tides went out,

who walked the shifting shoreline and
tasted ocean with their toes.
Blanche.
Barbara.
Elizabeth. 

They gathered agates and shells,
glass balls from a world away.
They gathered themselves, which is
what I am doing, one
pebble at a time. 

What greater treasure
could I wish for
than to be here,
to walk the edge
of everything, my tide
still coming in. 

The Prompt

Is there someone—maybe someone that you never knew—who has left this life but accompanies you in some way? Or is there a historical time or place that pulls you, almost as if you lived in it, even though you didn’t? Let yourself feel into one of these connections. Or consider the history of the ground right below your feet and the people or animals who may have walked where you now sit. What connects you to them? Breathe into these threads of connection. Notice if they grow thicker as you do. What poem wants to emerge from all of this?

I look forward to reading what you all share! I expect to be more engaged in the comments thread again now that I’m back home.