Sunburned Cousin
I saw a blond, sunburned cousin
Fishing,
Drinking,
Swimming,
The once familiar made exotic,
What made me, reduced to pixels on a screen,
Imaginings, memories
Craving the familiarity of the foothills,
The season’s change,
An explosion of pink and white buds overhead,
The sharp smell of a cut lawn,
The crackle of fallen leaves underfoot,
Puffs of breath, and iced over roads.
The flat midlands, draining the Upstate
Where an ocean used to lap at the edge of a continent.
In those parts, tilled fields may produce fossilized shark’s teeth,
arrowheads, artifacts of the past, strange, incongruent
And rivers continue south, swirling into the dark, low-country soil,
Ashley, Cooper, Wando, ancient, mystical waterways,
Sandwiched between hinterland and barrier islands,
Dafuskie, Dewees, Edisto, Sullivans, Capers
Where squishy pluff mud blackens the tidal water,
Nourishing banks of oysters, sea oats.
A silver anchor digs into the bottom, stopping the boat’s drift.
A blond, sunburned cousin takes off his shirt,
Puts away his rod and reel, and steps off the bow,
Into a rising tide,
Overcome with murky, salt water where mullet school,
And the rhythms of our past resonant,
Just down from Nana’s old place, that looked out on the marsh,
Around the corner from Grandmarg’s,
Where we shot bottle rockets and caught lightening bugs,
On the 4th of July.