Reunion Beach Elin Hilderbrand (best selling autobiographies .TXT) 📖

also named Peter! We spoke briefly, and I must have given her my card. She was so excited to hear about the ACE Basin Exhibition, which was closing the next day.

Sure enough, Dottie went to see/read my poems at the Gibbes Museum, bought my first book, and showed up at my door on Sullivan’s Island with the book and a bottle of wine and she asked me if she could include one of my poems in the front of her forthcoming novel, Plantation. It was as if we had both been writing about the same place at the same time. Dottie said that I could say everything she wanted to say in just a handful of words. So, my poem “River” appeared in the front of Dottie’s novel Plantation. The first print run was 800,000 copies. That’s a lot of eyes on a poem!

We became fast friends, and after that I was sent galleys and wrote the poem after reading the draft of Dottie’s novels: Shem Creek, Isle of Palms, Pawley’s Island, etc. It was such an honor to be included in her books, and I am forever grateful. I used to tell people that Dottie was my biggest fan, and she was. When I was appointed Poet Laureate of South Carolina in 2003 she sent me a case of wine and a set of wineglasses engraved with the words “Sullivan’s Island”; she framed and proudly displayed the broadside of the first inaugural poem I wrote, “Rivers of Wind.”

Our children became friends and remain friends today. Victoria’s first prom date was with my son Hunter, and my son Taylor was an usher in Liam’s wedding. Dottie and Peter folded us into family gatherings and other occasions. The love and generosity were boundless. A couple of years after we met, my husband and I had serious pneumonia at Thanksgiving. Not only did Dottie drop everything and make homemade chicken soup to “cure” me, she and her sister Lynn made an entire Thanksgiving dinner for our family and brought it over to our house. I can still remember listening to Dottie on the phone telling our son Hunter how to baste a turkey.

My heart is filled with memories of my dear friend. I miss her so much, and I still pick up my phone to call or text her and then I remember that she’s gone. I open one of her books; I hear her husky voice reading the passage. I see her beautiful smile, and she is with me, and we are laughing like we always did.

Poems

“REUNION BEACH”

The sea is calling us

home. There is nothing

stronger than that

pull; each wave dispelling

the patient passage

of time. No

beginning, no end

in the horizon’s blur,

where gull feathers

and stars are caught

in wind, swirling

above miles of sand

holding a crush

of memories.

Sandpipers scattered

at the edges

of low tide; green

ribboned steams

of seaweed

sliding

beneath your feet

as you took your first

stumbling steps

toward the sweep

of sea. Your mothers’

hands on either side

holding you up

like warm wings.

So many hours

lost in the long

sun, dribbling

watery sand

onto castle walls

gathering shells in buckets.

A red sneakerful carried

home, where bleached star-

fish lined windowsills

and brown conches circled

the garden like guards.

Your favorite grey whelk

held to your ear

before you could sleep.

You learned patience, walking

slowly through shallow water

until you found the row

of sand dollars, cold

beneath your feet,

picking one up with your toes

holding it like a prize.

Summer days spinning

cartwheels in one direction,

body surfing until the sun

dissolved over the city

and shrimp boats

lit up in a line like

a string of low-lying stars.

Carving the name

of your first crush

into the hard sand

far from the tide line,

you smoked your first Marlboro

on the overgrown path

through wondering dunes.

Standing at water’s edge

with your school friends,

you watched blue and rust

cargo ships slide by the island,

wondering what lay below,

dreaming of wherever

they came from.

You brought us

the world

of this island,

its wax myrtles

and palmettos,

pelicans

flying low

along the shoreline—

each beloved object

of your home place

lining the pages

of your stories

like sand scattered

between sentences.

We will return

in September,

the month of your birth,

the month

of your death.

We will retrace your

footsteps, watch

dolphins dip in

and out of waves, as if

they are following us,

hear your laughter as gulls

call back and forth

beneath wisps

of clouds, where we

will see you

in the radiant light.

“RIVER” FROM PLANTATION

The river is a woman who is never idle.

Into her feathering water

fall petals and bones

of earth’s shed skins.

While all around her edges

men are carving altars,

the river gathers flotsam,

branches of time, and clouds

loosening the robes of their reflections.

Her dress is decoupage—

yellow clustering leaves,

ashes, paper, tin, and dung.

Wine dark honey for the world,

sweet blood of seeping magma

pulsing above the carbon starred

sediment. Striped with settled skulls,

wing, and leaf spine: the river

is an open-minded graveyard.

Listen to the music

of sunlight spreading

inside her crystal cells.

Magnet, clock, cradle

for the wind, the river holds a cup

filling with miles of rain.

But when the river sleeps,

her celestial children

break the sticks of gravity,

grab fistfuls of fish

scented amber clotted with diamonds,

ferns, and petalling clouds;

adorn bracelets of woven rain,

rise with islands of sweet grass

and stars strung to their backs

to wander over the scarred surface

of the earth, like their mothers

simply searching for the sea.

“TOWARD THE SEA” FROM BULL’S ISLAND

The wind is an empty place.

You enter expecting something softened by the sea.

A piece of cedar shaped into a body

you once loved. Perhaps the hand that held you

from a distance or the face that simply

held you here. Still moving in and out of time

during the hour when night meets day,

you try to find your bearings.

You pick up objects. You want to remember.

Jagged edged rocks in the palm of your hand.

You hold them up in the moonlight.

They are earthbound, filling with sky.

You walk on further, pause to scoop tiny iridescent

shells, the colors of cream and roses.

Little by little the air brightens into hours,

which are either empty or full of all the things

you love and remember, depending

on which direction the wind is coming from.

“IN THE DREAM OF THE SEA” FROM THE LAND OF MANGO SUNSETS

I call you from the open water

surrounding us, speaking

across divided lives.

I call you

from the waves

that always have direction.

Where strings of morning glory

hold the dunes in place,

I call. In winter,

when wind pours

through cracks in the walls.

Inside, I call

although my voice

has