I used to imagine men like my father
shouldering these blocky boulders
creating the rutty wet pathway into the surf,
their foreman following some complicated
blueprint of size and shape and placement,
of exact layered black and grey greatness
piled in misaligned perfection,
leaving small pockets of murky space
where the ocean waves could shift and hide;
and holding my father’s hand, I’d step almost
where he did, across the moss covered
patches where the surf would break in to
the wind heaving its stench of decaying
fish and salt water—to the very end
to where, if we didn’t look back, ocean
was all we could see; the deacon’s
arm extending the communion plate.
2010 Bucks County Poet Laureate and recipient of the Penland Prize for Poetry, Lins’ has had work printed in numerous publications, among them the Bucks County Writer, the Schuylkill Valley Journal, Mudfish 16, Transcendent Visions and Eating Her Wedding Dress. Her chapbook, “I Called It Swimming” was published in 2011. Born and raised in central New Jersey, Lins now resides in Bucks County with her family and adopted Golden Retriever.
