27 July 2022

Leaving the Seashore

After Adrienne Rich

In the soft, sinking walls of the sandcastle,

there is a kind of osmosis. The stately structure, the towers

and battlements — all organically decaying amidst the shifting tide.

And she thinks: this kind of wonder, or hubris, can only

be understood by the child, or the poet, or the truly free.

If this were a metaphor, or a map, then it would be a map

of all her searchings — she who was born to the seashore,

and the longing of the periphery — how many sandcastles

had she built? How many fading statues of accomplishment,

how many crumbling palaces of the mind (its memories and

monsters, its infinitude of rooms), how many bungalows built by

lovers, whose shelters would, one after the other, wash away

with the tide? If this were a metaphor, or a map, it would be

the map of the beginning of her freedom —

not a map of choices, but a map of the one great choice.

So she walks barefoot into the ocean, leaving the seashore.

With the promise to return as tide or rainfall —

overflowing, bountiful, a gentle destroyer.

To be fully possessed by the mystery at last, which is to say,

to be fully possessed by the whole.