“I have walked through many lives” (Stanley Kunitz)

 

I was awake before 6, listening to gulls cry over the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the sounds I heard as a young child, more than half a century ago, just a few kilometers along the shore. At the foot of our road, the sea. After storms, flotsam and jetsam littered Dallas Road. Our windows were open, then and now, and the scent was kelp, bitter shore plants, damp wood, and shells. On Saturdays, my mother walked with us along the beach to gather bark for the stove in our kitchen. This morning, I remembered her voice as the wind swept my hair from my face.

every stone on the road
is precious to me

I walked the breakwater, on rock quarried not far from where I live now, Nelson Island, Hardy Island, the islands we passed yesterday on the ferry.

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was

Half a century passes, the heron still as a prayer on its kelp,

a tug heading out to the freighters waiting in the Strait, and across town, my daughter is preparing for her marriage tomorrow. Her brothers, their families, and her beau’s parents are all still asleep.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!

We will gather later today for a family picnic, children, and children, and children. This morning, first thing, as I walked over to the breakwater, five otters swam in a leisurely way toward me. Is there anything more graceful than an otter swimming in the early light, the water rich as honey? Five of them, as there were five of us, and now multitudes. even the ones who are far, or gone, or lonely.

Note: the lines are Stanley Kunitz’s, from “The Layers”