It must have been a surprise
to the first who split open
graveled rock to find briny delicacy
inside, hunger assuaged with the slip
of a shell tipped toward throats. Silos
of sunlight, striking through clear
water to a riverbed rippling with life.
How short the leap from then
to now, this rented Virginia land with its backyard
blanketed by astroturf, my wild black dog within,
tethered inside the four walls of our city
home, his gaze through our sliding door
toward treetops. Our lives are luxurious
in this borrowed place, with schedules,
subscriptions, our small patch of soil
forever green.
Outside, a scattered handful of squirrels,
chipmunks, birds with bright breasts
flit among the trees. Can I call myself
a poet if I cannot say their names? If all I know
is they are spring green and tall, that they seem
so sturdy I thought they’d always stand?
How to tell you about the dark gaze
of the dog as he watches the world pass by
behind panes of glass, the confusion of the squirrel
upon the false lawn as she sifts through plastic grass
for seed. We are renters here, none of those first
decisions ours, but isn’t this true of the world?
We inherit something shaped for someone
else’s temporary comfort, carve our own
at continued cost. There’s still time before
hands sieve through sunlight
at the bottom of silted shallows,
crack a barnacled shell wide to find
only emptiness within. The final oyster hasn’t yet
been served, plated on a bed of tumbled ice, little tin
of cocktail sauce and lemon slivers nestled alongside.
Champagne still arrives, fizzed bubbles lifting
toward the sky. Some birds still soar.
We haven’t smoothed out all surprises, shifted
all the ground toward synthetic silken lawns
of identical emerald. We haven’t reached the end,
when we, wistful, open up the earth to find
all it once contained, already devoured.
—
Kate Lewis is an essayist and poet whose work has been nominated for Best of the Net and appears in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and River Teeth’s Beautiful Things, among others. At Substack, she writes The Village, conversations on craft and community. She lives outside Washington, D.C. with her husband, their two young children, and a mischief-making dog, and she is working toward her first collection. Find her online @katehasthoughts.
