THE GHOST OF SURFER GIRL
They barely notice those filmy footsteps
travelling around them,
kicking up fine grains of sand
as she passes.
They barely notice the way the waves part
as she paddles out and over them,
or the way the wind bends around her
as she mounts her board.
They barely notice when she comes
crashing back to land, or the patches
in the sand as she flops down
out of breath, red with exhilaration.
She once laid openly in the sun, gathering
up melanomas the way some folks
gathered clams. But it was the spill
that killed her -- head on a board or a rock.
But all was not lost. She now gets
to ply her trade daily on the sparsely
treaded beaches. She misses walking
among the throngs in thongs, visibly
invisible, still straight and strong,
as she sails through the pipe in triumph.
WANDERING, A VILLANELLE
(based on a line from “The Waking” by Theodore Roethke)
I learn by going where I have to go.
I walk along the cliffs at Torrey Pines.
The voice inside me says it has to know.
I wander where the purple berries grow
and pick them off directly from the vines.
I learn by going where I have to go
that not all berries sweeten as they grow.
As butterflies whir by me as I climb,
the voice inside me says it has to know
why ugly creatures into beauties grow,
and ugliness can even seem sublime.
I learn by going where I have to go
that some lovers live within a constant glow
that never seems to dwindle over time.
The voice inside me says it has to know
why then do some affairs refuse to grow,
while others seem to stand the test of time.
I learn by going where I have to go,
and heed the voice that says it has to know.
CHRISTMAS PASSED
I did not stay up to see the comet Christmas Eve.
I lay my head upon the pillow foam to float into a sea of dreams,
into this state of watery unconsciousness with a salty logic all its own.
Somewhere in that dream world your planet spun next to mine
with a gentle whir, then darted off again on business of its own.
The rest was blackest undulating void, not even the twinkling burst
of a distant nova marred its shiny surface, and I wondered
if this is what eternity looks like.
When the waves of dawn broke against the hallucinatory shore,
and brother night ebbed into his fold, and sister sun poured out
into the world, my salt-stung eyes beheld your sacred art of getting
up and worshipping the dawn – that moment when the sun and moon
occupy the same sky, afloat with astral wonder.
By the time I rose, you had showered, shaved, and brewed
your thick black coffee to await the others still sleepily adrift
in other skies and other seas. You lay crackers on the table, fancies
to keep our children and the presents at bay for another hour,
as we laughed and talked within a sea of rainbow crowns.
We could not have guessed that later that year, the comet having passed
us by, we would set our parents adrift on ice floes of memory
in a sea of stars, as we took their places on the forward lines to face
the cosmos in our turn, plunging into that sparkling sea of mortal change.
There will be no Christmases like that again – no father of yours, no
mother of mine to gather with us at the table, just our nuclear brood.
Yet you, the physicist, tell me that the nucleus is what holds the rest
together.
Susan Love Brown is Professor Emerita in the Anthropology Department at Florida Atlantic University. Her poems have appeared in Twelve Mile Review, Lucky Jefferson, Cadence 2022 anthology, and the 87tth Annual Writing Competition Collection of Writer’s Digest. She is currently working on her first poetry chapbook, and she also enjoys writing mystery fiction.
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