When I go to places
The seaside
I am already leaving there
Rehoboth Beach
More water than sand
More sky than water
Bones of fish laid bare
A new tableau each morning
Tides take back
All that they lay down
Washing me to white
To bold
To bright
A seagull screams just once
And dissolves in my skull
Naked sun
She milks my pupils
Opalescent to blind
At dawn
I see dead birds
Banking fast from clouds
My cousin Eddie
Arc of his returning boomerang
A spinning, skimming whir
Over the green, the coppery
Glossy mallards
Old pennies for heads
Pumpkin orange feet
Folded under what floats and bobs
At the edges of Camp Brule Lake
Startled flock rising
Quaking the water lilies
Seesaw tipping frogs into leaps
A melee of flaps and squawks
My cousin Vernon now
Boomerang two
Not returning
Arm bent back as an arrow to its bow
One unlucky heartbeat
Twirling into tailspin
A roped corpse to splash
So boys can cheer
And echo echo echo
I am already returning
To Camp Brule Lake
Spilling into Elk Creek
Who pauses and changes her clothes
The Flat
Expanse of silt and limestone
Red shale and watercress
Big enough for two pickups
Nature’s Car Wash
In between cascades
A waterfall at the top
A waterfall at the bottom
Liquid chimes
Teacups resting in their saucers
On top of a walking tray
Treed place
Entombing the cold pools
Where fish can stand still
I step across The Flat
To the other side
Soles on the same level parts of the same stones
Nine steps
I’ve made it
The slippery silt covers me
Cloaked in branches and tangle
Caught without my own feet at the seaside
I dissolve into backgrounds brushed and shaded
Into the shadows of the places who know me
Virginia Watts has been published in The Philadelphia Inquirer, recently in Ruminate Magazine’s Readers’ Notes and her nonfiction story “Marti’s Father” appears in Volume 1, Issue 2 of Ponder Review, Fall 2017. This story has been nominated for a 2018 Pushcart Prize.
