Let me tell you what the mystery is – that a life can hold both, all.

That her life can hold the person who sat in a flimsy plastic chair,

 

watched a volcano glowing red, a line of lava trickling down and ate

the sweetest pineapple and drank cheap fruity alcohol from a glass bottle.

 

How that person had no idea what it would mean to rise again

and again into the night, into another’s cries, tumble through the day

           

on caffeine and some odd sense of gratitude. How she became a river,

never stopping or moving backwards and when she didn’t

 

want to rush, she tried to be still and somehow the same. A distillation.

 

I don’t understand how I got here. It was not without intention, but reminds me

of driving to the beach in Michigan – the colorful roadside fruit stands,

 

dunes and the bugs with their long, frail legs in the sand, a tough grass

I hadn’t seen before – a body of water that felt familiar, like the ocean,

 

but not – the park ranger who told us he liked to watch

from the top of the dunes, at the solstice, the witches gather

 

to dance naked along the water’s edge. Years later, one late night

on the Georgia coast, my husband and I took flashlights and searched

 

for ghost crabs – translucent and nocturnal. They were everywhere, scuttling

over the sand. We filled up buckets, then let them go back to the dark beach.

 

What I mean is there is so much left to see – even in the darkness, you hear it –

the waves crashing in as if to take you

                                                     out       there.

 

As if to say you could have it all back – shaving your legs

on a balcony in Amalfi, the fragrance of lemon trees and the sea,

 

but you know it’s a lie – the place is there but the girl is a ghost

crab on the beach, scurrying, and the girl is a coconut

 

busted and baking on the sand, the ocean meeting the shore

and frothing its hush. The girl is an open mouth,

 

and she sings the whole scene

                                 as she rocks her baby to bed.

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