by Kelli Russell Agodon

Because scientists have their fingers on our spines, we lift our shirts
to let their studies slap against our waves. Where are the sandpipers
of our youth? The house on the coast where I saw ghosts
of myself in every mirror. Sometimes I lust for a year
that has already happened. There’s no need to apologize
for hope because every year another kingfisher catches a fish,
because the herons pose like dark preachers talking about afterlife.
How often we forget what is holy, forget the holy in each other,
forget the tenderness of a stranger painting our grief
beneath the ocean in big brushstrokes, and for a moment
we walk around the dunes where families
of ants carry what crumbs they can find and we find a new trail
of wild strawberries and become beach citizens of found fruit,
become the P.S. I love you on the postcard we continue to write.

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Kelli Russell Agodon’s fourth collection of poems, Dialogues with Rising Tides will be published by Copper Canyon Press in 2021. She is the co-founder of Two Sylvias Press as well as the Co-Director of Poets on the Coast: A Weekend Retreat for Women. Agodon lives in a sleepy seaside town in Washington State where she is an avid paddleboarder and hiker. You can write to her directly at kelli@agodon.com or visit her website: www.agodon.com