Crook of the Arm

To ache is to remember our old home,
how ocean air would fleck the cliffs with foam
and whip the cove into a frenzied fit.
This town, of all the places to forget
forever haunts. I brush my teeth with sand.
I comb the seaweed through my hair and find
the carcasses of horseshoe crabs in my bed.
The shallow pools of sucking mud turned red
from years of rusted fishing hooks. The din
of gulls that swoop to grab your hot dog bun.
Cicadas keep the dogs awake at night.
Raccoons tip over garbage cans and fight
for scraps. The house next door holds someone new
each summer. Vines climb over the canoe
that we used only when the moon was full.
(My mother used to joke that she could pull
that pearl from Heaven with our tiny boat
by navigating her own secret route:
the bridge of light that stretched from shore to sea.
It would be hers if only she could reach.)
To feel is to remember how the grass
would squeak a dying note when firmly grasped.
It's mine, this town of green-head flies and bikes--
how could I possibly forget when nights
in dreaming I return to touch our porch?
Caress the graying shingles and the door
that's always open, weathered, letting through
the low-tide stench? The scent of evening dew?
Beneath our roof I move, nostalgic lust,
to climb stairs aging, warped with feathered dust
and from the salt-swelled window of her room,
I watch my mother wade out to the moon.