Searching for Seashells at Watch Hill
N.W. Hicks
I.
Leaving my parents on the way to Watch Hill,
I waved to your mother
in the window by the fireplace,
saw your father
chopping wood by the shed.
I wonder what has become of you.
II.
On my way to the beach,
I broke nearly every rule
we wrote down some twenty years ago –
Instead of sixty minutes of static
and public radio, I put on a playlist
with favorites we never found together.
Instead of two shoes in two colors,
I wore boots to blunt the January cold
and keep the sand out
because time wearies all bones.
There was no tea in the thermos,
only a paper cup of coffee;
a love we both came to,
separately.
Instead of cover of darkness,
I settled for daylight
because I had forgotten the way.
The journey was different without you
racing the sun
from the passenger seat.
III.
At the beach, I put the pennywhistle
you gave me
into my back pocket
although I have forgotten how to play
because at least one rule should be followed when facing the sea.
How things were different in that full light:
the fishermen gone from the jetty,
the white sand crawling with dogs
chasing gulls,
the sound of people almost as loud as the waves.
There were no whale ribs smiling in seafoam,
this time, but I found wings at odd angles
where a gull had tried to swim into the earth.
I wanted to pick the oily feathers for you,
pluck a piece of gossamer down,
like you would have,
but couldn’t remember the words
that you spoke over the whale
when you touched her rib.
IV.
I didn’t remember the Lady’s Slippers,
the murmur of pink shells
glowing in the wrack line,
or the red seaweed feathery in the whining wind.
So many things are forgotten with the passage of time.
But when the wind pulled your voice
through the pennywhistle
then carried you back to sea,
I remembered small secrets
you taught me –
I rubbed the sand from the soft side
of the first broken shell I saw –
brown and white,
earth and water –
and I wished for rain
to bring them together.
I waited to hunt for more seashells
until I passed the driftwood
by the dunes
where the other footprints
fell off.
How much smaller the wave-smooth root cage seemed
sinking into the sand.
I remembered wanting to carve our names
into the soft wood
with the keys in our pockets –
how you stopped me to read our futures in vertebra,
in fish bones, in stones
clacking in the surf,
checked twice in the tea leaves
in the heart of the thermos,
and said that soft wood was too permanent,
and wrote our names in the stones coming
and going in the tideline.
It took me too long to realize
that nothing is permanent; one day,
the driftwood will sink,
or the root cage will break anchor;
the sandpipers may play a dirge
from the dunes, but even they
will forget when the water calls it home.
V.
On the way back to the car, the ice
has cracked into pond lilies
against the sea wall
in the harbor; the peering poles
are capped with snow.
In a van, two teenagers sleep off a sunrise –
We have all fled the same street
searching for something
but one day we all look for excuses
to return.
One day, my mom won’t need seashells
for decoupage, and my dad’s chair will sit empty
by the sliding glass door. One day,
your mom won’t wave back from the window,
and your dad won’t count cords
by the shed.
One day, there will be nothing left of us,
on the street we shared,
and fled, except for the small secrets
sinking into sand,
and the promise we buried
beneath the cedar –
listen to the radio
because we should never fear not knowing
what comes next;
mismatch your shoes or socks
because we are allowed to be different;
carry your tea hot with honey
because nothing is more important than water
or bees, and the future is best kept
at your fingertips;
leave when the stoplights start blinking and carry no map
because nothing should hinder or hurry your journey,
except at your choosing,
and it is alright to not know the way;
carry a pen or a pennywhistle
because one day there will be nothing left of us
but the music and the words
we left behind.
N.W. Hicks
N.W. Hicks is a Connecticut-based New England poet. An alumnus of UConn and Manhattanville University, his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Atlanta Review, Wild Roof Journal, River & South, Tabula Rasa, Paper Dragon, and elsewhere. He believes in water but works with dirt and dreams of becoming a river’s meander.