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

been silent

and dissolving.

In sand

pulled back

into the body

of the sea,

from the blue

house built on sand

balanced at the edge

of the world

I call you.

Drowning stars,

shipwrecks, and broken voices

move beneath the waves.

Here, at the open

center

of my ordinary heart

filling with sounds

of the resurrected,

in the dream

of the sea,

I call you

home.

“TANGLED” FROM PAWLEY’S ISLAND

We return to hear the waves returning

to the beach, one after the other, connecting

us like blood. Long before we came

here, we were listening, remembering

wind, spinning salt, uninterrupted

sunlight. This is a place where dreams

return, fish bones tangled in seaweed.

Rinsed clean and kept, whatever sorrows

come are folded into the sea’s

unbearable secrets.

“SHEM CREEK” FROM SHEM CREEK

I

The swollen earth splits its skin

into waterways, scattered

and winding in every

direction, releasing winds

that carve the land to shreds. Where

sun-filled clumps of spartina,

smoothed into supplicating

rows of heavy bent heads, crowd

the edges of Shem Creek;

marsh wrens build their tiny nests.

As if they are playing hide

and seek, porpoises appear

then disappear below the sea.

Fish birds littering the sky:

egrets, gray herons, and terns,

oyster catchers, pelicans,

gulls diving and turning through

the thick pink tinted air.

II

Weaving through miles of treeless

Subdivisions and strip malls,

the creek gathers everything

from oil, soap, and gasoline

to tires and refrigerators.

After the rain, run-off fills

the oyster beds with dioxins.

Arsenic and mercury

drift through the water in clumps

of invisible clouds

as if no one will notice.

III

Beyond the clutter of traffic,

tourist shops, seafood restaurants,

hotels, bars, and parking lots;

docked shrimp boats bob up and down

beside the docks, where the creek

pours silently into the sea.

“BARRIER ISLAND” FROM ISLE OF PALMS

Where nothing is certain, we awaken

to another night of delicate rain

falling as if it didn’t want to

disturb anyone. On and off

foghorns groan. The lighthouse beacon

circles the island. For hours, melancholy

waves tear whatever land we’re standing on.

Listen to the sea-rain dripping

through fog, suspended at the edge of earth

on a circle of sand where we are always

moving slowly toward land.

A STANZA FROM “THE SOUND OF YOUR OWN VOICE SINGING” FROM FULL OF GRACE

The weight of love is the heaviest burden

you have learned to carry.

In the silence of the heavens,

it’s a dream that wakes you

with the sound of your own voice singing.

About Marjory Wentworth

Marjory Wentworth by Andrew Allen

MARJORY WENTWORTH is the New York Times bestselling author of Out of Wonder, Poems Celebrating Poets (with Kwame Alexander and Chris Colderley). She is the co-writer of We Are Charleston, Tragedy and Triumph at Mother Emanuel, with Herb Frazier and Dr. Bernard Powers; and Taking a Stand: The Evolution of Human Rights, with Juan E. Mendez. She is co-editor with Kwame Dawes of Seeking, Poetry and Prose Inspired by the Art of Jonathan Green, and the author of the prizewinning children’s story Shackles. Her books of poetry include Noticing Eden, Despite Gravity, The Endless Repetition of an Ordinary Miracle, and New and Selected Poems. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize six times. She was the poet laureate of South Carolina from 2003 to 2020.

Wentworth serves on the board of advisors at the Global Social Justice Practice Academy, and she is a 2020 National Coalition Against Censorship Free Speech Is for Me Advocate. She teaches courses in writing, poetry, social justice, and banned books at the College of Charleston.

Marjory first met Dottie in the early 2000s at a party; the next evening Dottie showed up at her door with a bottle of wine and Marjory’s first book of poems and asked her if she could include one of her poems in the front of her forthcoming novel, Plantation. Their mutual love of the South Carolina Lowcountry bonded them, and their friendship was immediate. Both women were married to men named Peter; even their children were the same ages, and they remain friends to this day. Sometimes friends become family, and it doesn’t get better than that.

For further information, see marjorytwentworth.net.

Also by Marjory Wentworth

Out of Wonder

We Are Charleston

New and Selected Poems

Taking a Stand

The Endless Repetition of an Ordinary Miracle

Shackles

Despite Gravity

Noticing Eden

Essays and Recipes

Nathalie Dupree

Snails

All I wanted for my thirteenth birthday was to dine at the nearby French restaurant like a grown-up. After much parental negotiations, Juli, my best friend since first grade, and I arrived on the local AB&W bus at Longchamps just as it opened for dinner.

Dressed in our Sunday best, we were greeted by the tuxedoed maître d’ as if we were royalty as he led us to our candle-lit white-clad table. Holding out my chair, a waiter whisked a huge napkin onto my lap and a menu nearly as large as I into my hands. After a few moments of being dumbfounded by the multiplicity of choices we asked for help and left ourselves in their capable hands.

And so I began my romance with fresh parsley, garlic, escargots, and French food, a strange and exotic land to a Southern girl. Before they arrived, we could smell them, the garlic and butter also providing a welcome sizzle. “Escargots,” the waiter said, are very special in France.

The fat escargots, served on a scorching hot round tin plate with indentations for the delicate pale shells, seduced us with their aroma before we saw them. The waiter, delighted by our unabashed enthusiasm, taught us how to hold the snails with a special implement, as well how to pull the snails out of their shells with a tiny fork. We sopped the bread in the indentations holding the buttery remains, sated only when every last bit was gone.

Finally, we were presented with little bowls with rose petals floating in them and told to lightly run our fingers in these finger bowls to clean them from our excesses. From then on, I have always relished dipping bread in the garlic butter sauce, even preparing it when there are no escargots. Sometimes I use this sauce with fresh clams; other times mushroom caps; but have been known to eat just fresh home-baked bread, garlic, parsley from my garden, and good butter.

Juli and I had just become of the age to wear stockings and garter belts—long before panty hose. When we left the restaurant it began to rain. We huddled