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.
so who calls the shots.
To destine the few lucky footprints into follow-worthy everlastingness
while so many other
noble contenders
simply get washed away
by the next wave.
most everybody's got feet.
(happy birthday today to my excellent wife karen and her everlasting footprints)
Lisa welcome back. And thank you for your shoreline poem. I love the ocean and collecting shells and rocks along the beach. I felt right at home in your poem. The prompt you gave us brought me to my grandmother. She passed years ago, and I still miss her deeply. I must admit I struggled with this poem. I am sure in part because I wanted it to match my deep love for her. Words just fail at times like this. But here it is anyways...
.
She was tall in stature, strong in might.
A self-made woman, not of our time.
Nurturing and raising five healthy youngins,
she grew a family while tilling the garden,
breeding chickens and milking the cow.
From her ardor, platters of vittles were forged.
I know for her appy pie was to die for!
Her husband was a preacher of the Word.
Yet she’s the one who imbibed and knew it!
A seamstress that sewed their lives together.
Vestments for their bodies, warmth for their hearts,
clothing for the many tables, windows, dolls and beds.
.
Then in full force her sixth pregnancy arrived.
Taking her robust nature hostage, hiding it away.
With her vitality fading, her might dwindling,
doctors were determined to terminate the gestation.
Yet she knew the seed wanted to draw its first breath.
Requesting a few more moments, even a possibility…
It was the faith of a mustard seed, an invincible will.
Along with tomatoes from her garden, harvested from
the substrate of life itself that fed and saved their lives.
Months later my mother was born into this world.
Amazing to consider, I am here because of her will,
and a few red tomatoes….