Back from the shore - but not really!

Back from vacation, and before I forget it, go in September if you can – the beach and the boardwalk much quieter, the hotels cheaper, and the water just as warm.

We stayed off the end of the boardwalk at Wildwood this time, a first for us and our motel, the Sea Gull was perfect for us.  Water baby that I am, I must have spent an hour a day in the pool there, and the cozy room was perfect, complete with an efficiency kitchen – for lunch some days, for supper others.  We do love an early breakfast seaside, listening to the sea gulls and the waves washing the shore clean for a new day.

We also answered the call back to Ocean City one day, the first place we vacationed on the shore and where we spent hours with the grands now grown-ups.  Would you humor me if I share the poem birthed after our return trip this year?

I smelled a smell

I smelled a smell as we

leaned into the climb up the
ramp to the boardwalk,
a sour smell, a urine smell,
and I wondered why someone
would do something like that on the
edge of God’s best work.

And then this new memory-in-

the-making connects with an
old one and it comes back
from all those years ago when
we dragged chairs and picnic
baskets and herded grandchildren
as they discovered this wonder
for the first time.

I dug a hole back then in the sand

and dropped in a jelly fish all
clear and jiggly along with a silvery
minnow and a crab as much
of a child as mine peering in and then
daring each other to touch it.

I smeared pasty lotion over their

silky skins and prayed it would protect
them and their parents would let me
do this again, savoring the splashing
waves, chasing them in and back out,
dancing with abandon just because
I could, because they could.

In a flash those memories filed themselves
away replaced by the day a child went missing
and some anonymous announcer asked
vacationers who were not listening
to be on the lookout for a three-year-old
girl with flaxen hair, (my words, not theirs)
they said blonde but a wee childy of three has
flaxen hair, and she is riding a pink bike and
we decide we might have seen her and

 Jim tells me to sit and he piles towels and chairs

all around me and this grandfather of another
goes looking for someone else’s grandchild.
I pray and watch up and down the boardwalk
and wonder at the blank faces passing me
by as if there are not panicky parents a few
steps away and after a half an hour I drag out
my notebook and begin to write because that
is all I can do  and then I see him, four pages later,
walking back to me, the fear gone from his
forehead and he says they have her, and I know
I will never forget this hour, so I remember again.

Sea birds screaming, dive bomb a saltine

dropped by a child and I hear his mother
warn him to throw it away and not to
feed the birds and I see the child
count the cost of disobedience and
reluctantly he lifts the door of the
garbage can and throws the cracker
into the darkness.
Not everything is worth a “No,” and it
appears, the boy has learned this lesson.

We scuffle our feet out of our sandals

and head to the water’s edge where
waves scatter shells, white and black and
red and birds skitter into the foam snatching
dinner before the waves wash it back
and I look for shells unbroken to pile in
a dish in my bathroom to remind me of
mornings by the sea for the days when
I start my morning by the woods.

I know I will find no real treasure, only

shards of shells that will open links of
memory, and for a few seconds when I lift the
dish to my nose I will smell salty breezes
and hear the scree of angry sea gulls and the
thrumming beat of a boat engine pulling
along some brave soul in the sky, and
then in the corners of the memory I will
smell the sweetness of a day meant only
to feel pleasure.