Return to the Sea

I did not know it until I arrived

but it was time for me

to return

to the sea

with my toes slipping between seaweed

and running down mossy paths.

Where it is still and bright

in the mornings

and sings soft and golden

in the evenings.

I think we all have our time

when we will return

to a place that was once home

and find ourselves

standing empty handed and new

wondering how we never saw

it that way before.

I grew here,

by the sea—

knotty haired and wild

and yet,

as time passed

I knew I needed to leave.

Perhaps it is as my Mormor said,

“we grow up then out and up again,

then we finally grow back down.”

She was speaking of our gangly bodies

sprouting and surging

then eventually aging and settling down—

and yet nothing ever means one thing.

Standing here by the sea

I know I was a mountain once—

tall and strong as a ponderosa pine

nestled into the parched, red earth.

And yet even then my roots told me

everything flows to the sea.

We will all always circle round

to who we are meant to be.

Bennet, Edith and Owen playing by the sea on Greens Island, ME.

Swimming in the sea.