Saving Daylight

I.  

The pelicans are feeding.

They glide—

hover for a sharp instant,

their wings, momentary arrows before the final plunge—

then plash down on fish-glutted waves.

Surfers sleek themselves like seals beneath backlit breakers,

paddling out, pushing for another wave, another ride—

taking full advantage of this blessing,

this extra hour,

before the sunset scrawls its bawdy signature

in the pelican-strewn sky.

 

II.

 

Did you walk this shore

on the bitter afternoons of your dying months,

fall’s short days nipping

at the heels of your long, broad shadow?

 

Did you take off your shoes and crunch

chill sand between your toes,

beneath the heavy heel of your steel-shafted leg,

bits of shell lodging in your flesh?

 

III.

 

An old woman, thin as bone, drifts with drunken elegance

along the cement boardwalk.  Her eyes search each face she passes

as if this stranger might have the answer to her long-

forgotten question.

Her feet, clad in gilded slippers, mimic the surge and eddy of waves

as she sways carefully forward. 

 

Startled by a band of skaters, loud and huge

against the calm, shared sunset, she

falters,

wavers, off balance at the sudden obstacle. 

Weaving in ever larger circles above wide-planted gold feet,

she peers into their young, shadowed faces. 

 

If she falls, she will break like a wave,

sluicing away into the thirsty sand.

Skaters less a threat than standing still, she resumes

her elaborate stroll toward the north pier.

They part as if she is Moses.

 

IV.

 

I separated your ashes today.  Broke the seal,

smoothed the clear, plastic bag over the wide mouth

of the black ceramic urn—

a plastic cervix from which I spooned your gritty remnants

into a smaller, unlabelled jar.

 

Your Hell’s Angel friends will keep the lion’s share of you

In the heavy urn—a pair of headstoned days

and your name gilded on its glistening, obsidian side.

It will be their mobile monument to you,

guest of honor at Thursday night dinners. 

The Angels know nothing of

today’s grim ceremony.  One of their women was

co-conspirator.  I was reduced to supplicant,

grave robber, thief. 

 

Your ashes were surprisingly dense,

whiter than expected,

with stray bits of bone scraping the spoon.

 

Later, death’s midwife,

I bore the nameless jar to our mother’s waiting and mournful arms.

 

V.

 

Seagulls fight over lamppost perches

with savage nips and parries.  They face the impending sunset

hunkered down, jealous of their two-bird-at-most territory.

Beneath, we humans face the beach, staking out

our own patches of towel, bonfire or bench.  All looking out—

waiting for that joining of day to night, the juncture that draws us

like sex—

and then is gone.

All of us looking out.  Except those who watch their young ones

at play on cement dolphins, twisting slides, the swing set.

The passing sun holds no interest for them as they guard

the bones, skins, joys of their children.

We are opposite vanguards, facing incursions of night.

 

VI.

 

We measured you out in ever diminishing shares

in Mom’s close rectangle of a kitchen.

She heaped a tablespoon with towering piles of ash.

In three deft scoops, she filled

the small, round Tupperware I bought

specifically to carry your sand north with me.

Her movements doubled against remembered baking lessons.

 

Mom leveling the measuring cup while we watched,

scraping off the excess with the flat edge of a butter knife. 

You made the best pie crusts in the family,

fluting the edges with brisk, sure pinches—leaving regular swells

that baked into crusts so good we would lick our fingers,

press them to the crumbs—eager for one, last taste.

 

Mom clicked the spoon against the jar, dislodging

odd memory and clinging ash.  She pressed the lid gently,

reluctantly into place.

 

The sideboard held an empty space

just large enough for her jar of you.  As if it knew

and was waiting.  We lit candles, touched your picture,

told stories that grow more fecund with each telling. 

Asked questions without answers.  Later, I brought my portion

of you to the shores of La Jolla, where we played together

in the waves and the sand—thirty years ago.

 

VII.

 

I sit for an hour witnessing the descent of sun

to horizon, waiting for it to stain the waves and sky.

I know the walkers, the lovers,

the children who leave the beach wearing shoes of wet sand

and shell bits on bare feet.

I watch the pelicans diving and floating,

the surfers and the skaters.  I breathe in the sea and

taste the waves—

the kiss of salt and ashes on the air.

 

© Laura J Morefield