Bonfire at Cape Cod with Marge Piercy's Workshop
No one has brought a first draft. On this smooth strip of beach
that someone pocked with a shovel, two feet deep and wide,
we use the ordinary items for kindling: the same front page
of the Cape Cod Times wadded again and again to fit
the gaps between logs, thin planks with nails still stuck out
and curled. When the last embers burn out, only the nails
will keep their shape—our materials outlived by what almost
held them together. For the last week around the table,
we’ve dissected our scraps. The words worth keeping
have gone to folders and the rest to piles, compost or recycling,
whatever fate we assign to our thoughts that will not survive
the year. The useful things will still serve us. The binders
that held our worst drafts will hold our best someday,
the pens retain their ink, the tide continue to crash
even if all we can write is that it crashes a lot, loudly,
a rhythm we read too much into. Here on the sand,
the work week done, we are content to watch the show.
The flames toss up patterns, flash, then withdraw them;
the sky pulls its nightly trick, wrings red and pink from blue.
When it darkens, we head back. With our directions,
in separate cars, we navigate the roads without names,
finesse the sharp turns, one hand ready on the brights
until we return to the cabins, the locked doors and luggage,
our retreat to the things we know better than to lose.
Published in Angels in Seven (Moon Tide Press, 2016)