The sand resisting could not stop a child’s footprints sinking,
lilies or damask ferns brushed aside
as we approached the bay. Seaweed rushed
over feet, woodblocked the sand spit
where crows caroused like noir killers,
only to leave at once.
It was the same returning
after my mother’s death,
surrounding hills knuckled,
not shifting, like grime
buried while I pretended
the scallywag Pacific Ocean
could filter shallow flats.
I don’t tell it often, but the coffin I built
from slats of a derelict boat
whose red paint hung on after decades—
perhaps not even the abbreviation
of a woman sheltered in a bird blind
reached by a long pier, her raised binoculars—
even with my jacket zipped to the neck
the wind bit my ears.
—
Laurel Benjamin is a San Francisco Bay Area poet, active with the Women’s Poetry Salon. She curates Ekphrastic Writers and is a reader for Common Ground Review. Current publications: Pirene’s Fountain, Lily Poetry Review, Cider Press Review, Taos Journal of Poetry. She is a Cider Press Review Book Award finalist, Pushcart Prize nominee, and received an Honorable Mention for the Ruben Rose Memorial Poetry Competition. Find her at: https://www.laurelbenjamin.com
