---

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Gather

The women gather
across the flat world of my tv.
They cry out for justice,
for humanity,
for their rights
and my rights, too,
though I am distracted
by the shell,
glistening in a pool
of morning sunlight.

I only halfway hear
the women protest as I hold
the curving white calcium,
lifting it to my ear.
The muted surf of a faraway sea
still echoes
in the spiraled chambers,
churning up fond remembrances,
buoyant and purified,
rebounding in the
little white house,
that once provided shelter.

The monolithic fortress
of the most powerful man
on earth
flashes on the screen.
I place the scrubbed,
pearlescent shell
on the coffee table
so that it lines up perfectly
with the White House
on the screen
and then pause to consider
the two white houses.
Both are pristine.
Both are chipped
around the edges.

I get up to make the coffee,
but not before the flashing news
of an ancient glacier
breaking loose.
Now freed from its icy mooring,
the glacier floats away
to certain demise
as the sea rises to cover the land.
Round and round,
these tumbling thoughts
while I grind the coffee beans
to the fineness of sand,
like the sea would have
ground the shell,
had I left it behind.

The protesting women
have not returned.
Instead, a tightly framed closeup
of another kind of shell.
This one with the luster
of smoke and brass,
empty of the singing sea,
noted and numbered
at the scene of the crime.
The deafening sound
of a deathly bullet
that the gunmaker said
could not be stopped.
Our freedom,
lethal but guaranteed.

The sun has moved
beyond the seashell,
leaving it bone colored and dull.
I barely notice it now
as one horror after another
unfolds on the morning news.
I realize how much I long to see
the marching women,
gathering up small treasures
as they proceed
in steady assent,
delicately maneuvering
the broken shells
in a quest to stop humanity
from coming loose
like the glacier
and melting away
in the warming sea.

---

---

Brewing coffee.
I wait for the drip drip drip to stop,
impatient for the rich brown liquid
to revive me.
I have retreated from
the droning news,
hearing only the rise and fall
of voices,
a murmuring tide,
almost hypnotic,
as I stand in the kitchen,
half awake,
and miss the exact moment
when the women reappear.

The coffee sloshes in the mug,
burning my hand
as I turn toward them.
More women have gathered now.
I feel the heat of their protest,
their faces distorted
by the steam rising from my cup.
I wonder if, somehow,
they could have broken free
from the flickering screen
to beckon me toward them
on a rising tide of indignation
pouring out through the glass
so that I lose my bearings,
and bump into the coffee table,
upsetting the shell,
sending it to shatter
on the red tile floor.

The shell, my prize...
gathered on a gentle summer day
of golden sun and sand,
warm water lapping at my feet,
the frothy wave filling the shore
before pulling back into the sea,
and leaving in its wake
the gleaming shell
that now lays in pieces
on the ground.

Tears stain
the silk robe that matches
the color of my eyes.
Hard won silk,
from a foreign place,
now ruined by salty tears.
The women chant,
ancient words,
their eyes looking far away
to the seaside and the glacier,
and the route the silk has traveled.
The women shake small, bony fists,
their voices no longer quieted
by phantom waves,
once coiled and flapping,
trapped inside the shell.

Along the shoreline,
where the jagged, broken reefs
cut through tender flesh,
I am with them now, these women
as they emerge once again
from long waves of humanity
and gather on the shore,
to reclaim and deposit
one more treasure.

Copyright by Shari Cookson/All Rights Reserved