Poetry
Ordinary Amber
by Jennifer Atkinson
I wander, combing the same sand-grass margin —
today to bring home a bleached arc of herring-gull bone,
blue beach glass the opaline color of glacial ice,
polished cinders of last night's driftwood fire.
Left behind: blue mussel shells, shark's eyes,
a thousand periwinkles, everything that moves.
How to know the holy? By its shadow.
How to draw its image? With a stick in the sand.
Our house is built on a causeway between marsh and marsh,
high tide and low, on the way to the sea and back.
Cedar, oak, roses, a transplanted Japanese cherry,
rooted in soil on sand on clay and a shoal of crushed oyster shell.
Asked to imagine the end of desire, I dawdle, daydream,
and change the subject. Look, a raveling spiral
of candle smoke, a helix of white cabbage butterflies.
Another day gone, seen through a tear drop
of amber, cherry-sap amber oozed from a crack in the tree trunk.