Shell
Gone to fetch my fly rod, the kayak floated off
without me, an ordeal to bring it back,
Samaritan swimmers helping,
and in the struggle lost my clamshell cell
to the sea. How on earth does anyone
ever find anything in an ocean
that prefers to strew gifts on the beach?
For weeks I imagined the phone,
vagrant in the sea like any other shell.
The fella at the phone store searched
for my lost calls and as he looked
I daydreamed messages, songs, from Amatheia,
Muirgen, Iaira, Melusine, Triteia,
Barbara, Where are you?
—Stuart Bartow
This article appears in March 2017.
