God is in the mountain not the wetlands where one
thousand worms reside in a square inch of mud. The marriage of fresh
and salt water: scavenged for shells, dredged for salt. From the arctic,
migrants come in autumn to feed and rest. Birds of passage have their
own reasons for being.
To harvest salt, the ponds summon light; draw crystals
close to belief. Or the bewildered wander like Jesus through the brackish
water and imagine bread the size of stones, serpents the size of smelt.
Home is always first-born; rows of houses frame the Back Bay with colors
of pearl and bar-harbor gray. And sometimes, it is as if the light from
our windows becomes tangible.
Sheaths of bulrush mind the shallows. At
low tide, the cordgrass exhales; their leaf edges ooze excess salt. When
will I find the glimpse of God in the sickle grass or bladeless sedge?
Lorene Delany-Ullman is
a native Californian, and earned her M.F.A. from the graduate program
in writing at University of California, Irvine, where she currently teaches
composition and poetry. She has recently been published in Elixir, Crab
Creek Review, Washington Square, and Perihelion. She is also one of the
founding members of the Casa Romantica Poetry Reading Series in southern
Orange County.
