Gray-black bones of coastal pines
stab a Carolina-blue sky along a coast
where once the Algonquian trod,
generations before the English.
Tall and stark, these specters stand
witness to once abundant reciprocity
of pine, woodpecker, red fox, and bear—
before the ocean’s rise salted the land.
Most remain single, truncated posts,
ghostly shadows of past glory.
Others raise bare arms to heaven
in last desperate, ragged protest.
The ocean has no agenda here;
she goes where she must, takes all in her wake.
But can you hear from below this sodden soil
the eerie sound of wailing?
—
Laura Long is a nature writer, poet, and journaler in Southern California where she treads the ancestral lands of the Acjachemen and Tonga peoples.
