Marshlands

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Marshlands


I do not think my grandfather ever

pressed an oyster shell into my palm, 


with fingers callused from crab traps 

wrapped my little ones into a fist 


around it as we stood on his dock

in the Beaufort River. I do not think 


this ever occurred, though I can feel 

the moment’s sharp edges, smell the pluff mud 


my dad buried himself under as a kid 

to scare Scott Dennis, thick stuff 


beneath which his dad would gladly have been 

buried if not for his long-calcified love 


for the Presbyterian fold. Truth 

is always at stake, but what won’t we make


to trace these tributaries we washed up from,

to see what endless they end in, anything


to explain this chafing to make something 

beautiful with the grain on our tongues.

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