Shell, Ceil Drucker

Shell
by Ceil Drucker

You are a dream I once had
floating in this soft, green sea.
Your features waver in my memory
like the flash of
silver as a fish darts by;
your skin soft and cool, like wet sand underfoot.
Your eyes are forever closed like anemones in a tide pool,
but still I search my imagination for their color-
coming up as empty as hands that long
to carry seawater
from the shore.
The summer days linger on,
measured in waves and saltwater.
The sun makes a lazy arc
across the wide sky
and I stand here at the oceans edge,
outstretched arms as achingly empty
as a shell resting on the beach......
waiting to find
the pocket of a smiling child.

:::

about the piece.
Ceil talks about this poem, "I spent last summer by the sea working on fertility issues with acupuncture and healing work and hoping to become pregnant. When we lost Kai (Hawaiian for ocean) in June after a wonderful winter pregnancy in the desert, we returned to the shore to work on grief and loss with acupuncture and healing work, hoping to just survive. Every day I try to let the ocean remind me that ebb and flow is the way of the world."


about the poet.
Ceil Drucker is among other things, a writer who seldom writes and now a mother who doesn't get to mother. She is riding the waves after the loss of her son Kai on his due date, in mid June.