Cape May

I have never understood great American poets

They talk about the mountains

the wheat

the corn

the middle of nowhere,

a landlocked country that I know not by sense,

but by beach reads I bought from the Strand when I was last in the city:

Whitman and Walden

I am from a peninsula of

rivers that with soft rains seethe themselves into quiet swamps,

furies that flood valleys,

where Poseidon engulfs the land,

his turbid waters rise half to the height of hills,

and it becomes a country of Charybdis’ keep

I am the oceans

reflecting myself in the myriad of tide pools,

a nereid with lemon in the waves of my hair,

each strand soaking up every sunbeam,

dripping, wet, hair—black as seaweed dries to a sun-bleached, white sandy blonde,

tight, ocean blue jeans, ripped at the knees like sea spray

along the beach

cool waters are a blue mare galloping close upon my heels—

glancing back,

I look to see if Jesus walks with me, but of those sands the ocean sired,

there is but one path forward,

the waves wash away my steps

lost as far as I sea,

but I rest peacefully upon the surety of His word,

I decide he came before me,

always walks before me;

I can only follow the way he walked and try to keep up with Virtue’s pace

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My father and I

Sunset Beach, Cape May

all day we have been fishing

we bought bait from a shop

and we catch only horseshoe crabs

when he promised me sharks

the riches of the ocean

I wanted to steal the sight of them, but a moment

glance at the wealth born out of a mermaid’s purse

my county on the coast cannot boast a rich culture,

we do not have marble,

but we carved canals out of bedrock

and stocked their stomachs full of rainbow trout: a droughty summer noon’s sunset creature

My father is a river fisherman,

that is what his knowledge was fed growing up,

we have bought lures that reel in only clumsy, crawling creatures;

dredge up only blind, tripping things

that drag up from the depths my disappointment

and I compare my father to the man fishing next to us

in the overcast, he is the only other soul seated sidesaddle to today’s choppy sea.

He has brought octopus,

‘Sharks love them,’ he tells us.

My heart sinks, tugs like a line

a snag in my day on a weed

a weight on my heart

with the sting of a crab’s tale

telling me with the strain and snap

of a break in the line,

even the cute crab is lost,

in comparing my two or four

catch and release, fitful and crabby bounty

to the tiniest of pups swimming

in this stranger’s poser tide pool.

He leaves it in there for me to pet

I think, ‘My father only attracts crabs

because he is a Cancer.

It is only this karmic connection

that binds them to us and for this

I should be grateful or else we would have drawn nothing.’

I touch its rough skin with envy

their fathers who do not tell them,

‘No matter what you do,

you can never make your parents love you.’

Salt in a wound,

I didn’t know I had,

he made clear as well water,

a frown tugging at my face,

the sleeve of my green, fisherman-knit sweater is wet

turning dark like the sea where I keep rubbing my mascara.

‘I want to keep it.

It’s all I’ve ever wanted.

It’s all I’ve ever wanted.

Something as smooth and as soft as my father’s love.’

the beach is empty

and the sea yields nothing,

nothing like that feeling

he lets the sharks go

he spills the sea back out on to the sand

and leaves

I long for a lover that let me go

he cannot return to me like that darling to the ocean,

but I want him to take me across the ocean

steal me across the sea

under the steel overcoat of clouds that brings the cold to the summer

I don’t want him to let go of my hand:

I wait for him to walk out from under the waves

and on to the boardwalk with me,

towards the noise that makes my heart beat under the gaze of the carnival lights,

your arm,

your warmth on my skin,

your memory, flotsam in my head again

The heart of the ocean breaks under this;

at sunset,

rain cascading torrential waterfall as God expands upon his word,

his reminder of the flood

and then of fire in a thunderclap,

lightning lifting the surf high,

then higher and higher to grasp

at the loose thread of Heaven’s gossamer hem,

hail pelts,

Heaven’s sea-glass,

harder than the shell of a sacred crab;

beats me with the flick of God’s smallest finger,

saying to me:

‘Water yourself with tears if you need to;

like the smallest, softest plant of My ocean,

every moment you breathe, you serve Me well.’

my reply/affirmation:

‘As snow is bitter cold to the tongue,

even it is a drop of water to drink.

I will see it not as lack, but abundance;

not as withholding,

but redirecting the current,

smoothing the waves to take me where I will survive.

‘Even for a little, He should be praised.

Nothing is purposeless nor drifting,

every wave reaches the shore,

every snow squall touches the earth in every corner of its core.

He will always find a way to sustain me,

so long as I live.’

The sky opens up and we run to his old Jag.

The rain in life never seems to end. I remember running, laughing through it long, long ago. Inside, I watch that memory wash away through the car window. My dad puts the car into reverse and we head back to the shore house.

Home again,

I walk up to my room on the third floor and watch the rain where we used to watch the sunrise.