Cape Porpoise, Maine

I go back to that walk,
island to island
across the mind at low tide –

the sun that dips down
or the flaring sun, dismissing the houses
on the cape, that dimension of the jutting houses

and the way the wind shows them
and then deepens suddenly and is all around me
like a person I know well

and the occasional broken shells
like my mother’s unfinished sentences,
her childhood memories I still enjoy visiting.

I go back so I can walk
past my own past into hers
though the tide will come in soon –

as no solution, and with no ambition
but to roll up my bluejeans
and walk where the water was.

from Coastal (Enitharmon, 2005), © Jane Duran 2005, used by permission of the author and the publisher.

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