The sun lays a path across the sea
to some dark rocks salted with seabirds,
cliffs, shell-stacked, lost in the mist,
the layers of dead tucked in their beds.
One listens for the essence of things,
a gull scream, the dull patter of rain,
the echo of the sea in its conch.
The bells of Saint Mary of the Sea ring
for the drowned to rise and in the fields
the snails slide out of their shells.
An old woman steps painfully
over the broken stones into the swells,
strokes into the path that the sun lays
and bobs in the waves like a babe.
-Gregory Schaffer
