The Poems: Beach

My Birthday and the Annual Ache of August

Wollaston Beach, Quincy Bay, South shore of Boston, where I grew up.

I drove to the old neighborhood

on a Tuesday morning,

looking for a place inside

that was left untouched

by time and trying,

vacant of ego,

quiet of the voice of recompense.

I stepped out of the car

where Sachem Street

meets Quincy Bay,

climbed over the seawall

as the musk of low tide

drew me through the rear view,

when awkward was being and

narrow the road to heaven.

Only now

can I see the revelations of

then,

in the blue below the Boston skyline,

in the sand and the cobble,

a curved line of dry seaweed, the

abandoned armor of a horseshoe crab,

the unhinged shell of a razor clam

lying loose of life.

Only now

can I hear the declarations of

then,

in wind on waves toned with

passing cars flowing and blowing

beneath the cries of

ghettoed gulls

and the cruel laughter of

Catholic girls in bathing suits

holding sway over the night

when dizzying echoes of clumsy utterances

harmonized in moonward song only

to fall

to earth

with protestant shame.

I do not always know

that I feel the presence of

only now,

but if I do,

it would be in waking moments

being born to a new day,

with eyes unsure to open,

with a fleshy heart unstirred,

before my human mind remembers

the reluctant grievance I hold against the shoreline

for letting me go

just because I could not stay.

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Yesterday was my birthday, which coincided with this poem being in the queue, next up for posting here. It was also precisely 49 years ago that I was driving a blue 1973 Ford Pinto following behind my parents in the station wagon just ahead, from our home in New England to our new home in Kansas. I’ll spare you the commentary on culture shock for a boy just turning 18. I’ll also spare you any regrets. I’ve been able to go back many times to walk that beach, to feel the old feels, and reach new understandings of why I left and where I was headed. Departures, deaths, divorces have come and gone, and now I’ve lived in Colorado for 33 years, and in this house where I’m sitting for twenty. I’m settled and looking forward, mostly, and happy as a man can be who was born in August.