Ashes
Requiem: Cypress Point, Carmel
Richard Beban
In this depression formed by two sandstone
boulders, gold & gray, we each cup a handful
of ash & rose petals from a hammered
copper box, arc them into the green-glazed
sea where kelp sways like hair brushing a young
girl's shoulder. Waves crash & echo, mask her
father's voice, save for the keening. When he
turns back to land it is pitched low again.
He reminds her friends of all they have to
live for, begs them not to follow her lead.
The tide pushes in & in, & we help each
other
clamber up the rocks to safe ground.
A heron stands out on the water, rides swells
on a piece of driftwood we can't see.
We watch the ocean as though she is going
to come back.
~~~~~~~
Richard Beban lives in Playa del Rey, California,
where he helps nonprofit environmental organizations get their messages
out into an overcrowded "marketplace of ideas." His poetry
has appeared in numerous chapbooks, anthologies, journals, magazines,
a CD, and two full-length books of poetry, both published by Red Hen
Press: What the Heart Weighs and Young Girl Eating a Bird,
from which this poem is reprinted. His poem “Salishan Beach:
Dead of Winter” appeared in the Autumnal 2006 issue of Sea
Stories, and “To Bruges, Which Once Was a Seaport” appeared
in Vernal 2007.
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