Edge of a Blue Expanse
Early in the
2000’s,
my aunt and I
took the
backroads
along the coast
back to Atlanta
from Panama City Beach,
Florida.
Everywhere
evidence
of a recent hurricane
appeared in
debris
pushed high up in trees,
tangled weavings like giant,
prehistoric
bird nests
of jumbled
netting,
broken bits of fishing line,
brambles, and driftwood.
An eternity of
blue
to the right of
the shoreline
drowsed, placid
azure
sea and sky,
herons winging
white
across salty marshes.
Was my aunt’s
heart-scape the
same?
Survivor of a
divorce in the 70’s,
her only marriage,
no children,
a career woman,
gone to fat
to “keep away the wieners”.
She once volunteered
to rock a baby
born with hydrocephalus,
simply to hold him
and comfort his crying.
Within her was
a battered
coastline,
littered with tattered,
snarled swaths of sails,
hunks of plastic
Dasani bottles
and crushed
Coke cans,
and warped, wet boards
rotting in warm
water
under the sun,
now home to barnacles
and tiny
crustaceans,
all mashed together,
embodiment of a
retreated wave,
pushed up to
the edge of a
blue expanse.
Watching out the window,
I made a
promise
to myself to be
light
like the heron
flying
over the storm-tossed coast,
to be peaceful within,
like the water beyond,
still and blue,
and to be like the radiant sun,
returning all the warmer
when the
tempest ended.
Chani Zwibel is a graduate of Agnes Scott College, a
poet, wife and dog-mom who was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but
now dwells in Marietta, Georgia. She enjoys writing poetry after nature walks
and daydreaming.
Recent Publications include:
Occulum
Oct 2, 2017,
Dissident Voice Sept 24, 2017, HorrorSleazeTrash August 26, 2017, The Song Is August 9, 2017, Clockwise
Cat Thugwise Cat Issue 37 (June 2017),Sage
Woman Worlds of Faerie Issue 91(April 2017), W.I.S.H (Walking Is Still Honest) Press March 10, 2017, Provoke Journal, January 2017
Tags:
Poetry