Estuary Peace

I have found your maternal spirit at the top of the Point as I breathe in the salty mist of the Delaware Bay estuary in Lewes.  This is where I have landed.  A place I do wish you would have ventured with me.  I talk to the sea now instead of you.  I talk to the creatures that I believe live in the sea deep within the confines of each ecosystem whether aquatic or in the forests.  My conversations in the marsh I will share with you as it is my journey now.  You always found my poems endearing but in so many words you genuinely thought that I should stick to my day job.

Yet now I sort my grief in the rambling folds of the gently rolling tides and in the cloister of the woods as I traverse the trails in silent comfort while my bicycle wheels lead me each moment to a better place of hope.  My hobby of writing is keeping me alive and connected to a place of caring.  Somehow the conversations in the marsh and among the pine needles pecking at my feet are a telepathic conversation with you, the spiritual world and the rustling rabbits, fawns and even frogs that I need to believe are listening to me.   I hear them scurrying as I fly by feeling deeply alive and regenerated.  And yes, I say hello to all of them!

 I rode my bike through the woodsy trail that leads to Rehoboth Beach.  There is a bridge over the marsh where I stopped, and I took photos of the marsh as far as I could see.  The roar of children’s bicycle bells and family chatter in the distance didn’t dissuade my attention to the snake-like winding of the marsh.  The still bare branches against the blue cloudy sky promised me that should I return in a month, such emaciated twigs wouldn’t look like black skeleton x-ray branches bare and bold but would breathe green, shiny leaves and scents of summer laced with the jasmine like scents of the locust trees with which I am deeply enamored.

Clusters of River Birch with their bark pained and peeling gaze back at me and bend their FICA like leaves lit by the sunlight as if life had never been cruel to their core. Yet it has and will as storms will shed more of its trunks with beauty immersed in their decay.  It is in the Magnolia’s dirty leaves and scent I quaff down as I pedal past their enormous branches.  Delirious in my olfactory senses I pedal into hysteria from the canopy of perfumes.  Lilac, Magnolia, and Locust trees taunt spring into summer. Fleeting moments of sweet shrouds and then just the birds and cool caress of the forest’s hue.  A cool gaze tinctured with a touch of dew to make the journey ever so sweet. My journey of grief and life without you here!

My journey has turned to the heart of the sea and soil scape, and in that place, I have found peace and answers within the

Mom, in this place of grief I am emerging like a strong member of the merfolk out of my own dark abyss into a place where I will create blessed writings of sanctuary and peace.  I am the estuary and the estuary is me.  I survived in strength speaking to the spectral remnants of you and me, now I alone am here still steeped in my conversations in the marsh.

And yet, in the silent sanctuary of the sea in winter’s wrath and freeze, I chat with Gully my seagull friend and find I am very much in the here and now.  Okay without you somehow.

Yet Gully can’t explain to me the upheaval of the sea and emotions. Cyclonic moments of grief mixed with peace in winter’s dreams just a mere-

Dearest Mom, the last time I saw you in my dreams well over a year ago, you were lit like a white firework finale, vibrant, young, smiling and you were in Sorrento waving goodbye and nodding no that you would never stay.  Perhaps, not even in my dreams.  Hard as I tried to conjure you in my sleep, you were gone.  You have been gone, and I left you in Italy since I sensed you wanted to be gone.  But you haunt me when I stare out at any sea.  Are you café side near majestic indigo waters dreaming of me or are you eternally happy now?  No pain, no sorrow.  Do you even have thoughts of me as I do you?

I stand on clumps of wet sandy earth a gaze out to the Atlantic where old, abandoned lighthouses linger on the pitted jetty cliffs where sea urchin graves lie empty and sailors’ remains are buried under the Lewes ferry parking lot.  I stand over asphalt somewhat shaken that abandoned sailor bodies lie dormant in silence unmarked, unknown, yet I hold each soul in reverence.  And where are you?  Sipping limoncello somewhere in the bustle of the seaside ancient buildings of coral and bold blues soaring around the Amalfi coast.  It would be so like you to just disappear into an eternal holiday.  I need to tell myself that is where you are so that I don’t self-destruct.

Not one day did you let depression drag you down.  You lived the fullest, vibrant, loving life.  The antithesis of mine laden in darkness, dark poems, dark waters my only solace is the sound of escape as the rubber meets the road.  And will I ever be brave to go to Italy and leave this Cabot Cove existence.  Will I ever bask on the jetted shores of another country?  Can I laugh, dance, and just live like you did every day?

It is in this place that I sort out fears that are more unreal than my spectral notions of where you are right now. What if, Mom, I was to land on

Mom, the places in my heart are much like you.  Seaside rather than stateside always my sanctuary of rolling blue.  I have landed within a contemplative place mourning has melted into a dull sorrow that I reside along and within

Yet, mourning is still hidden within cold March winds that roar up the coast, and I try to believe the sun is promising warmth with its majestic sunsets and melodious morning songs of baby red finches that dance and gawk while I say hello.

I promise to stay and here in the rapture of the next song of my life.  Finchy and Gully swear it will all be okay!  And in silence we pray.