A Poetry Award Submission by Nan Rush
Weekend on the Rocks
(for my
daughter)
Hiking the West Coast shore,
do you think of me?
When you see waves
crash through arched rocks
do you think how far you’ve come
from your childhood?
Cold nights in your tent,
looking at the stars,
do you think of where
you’ve been?
Do you remember
the first cave,
my womb,
that nurtured you, then
let you go?
Do you look out the
arch of your tent
and wonder where mother’s
crashing now,
what she’s beating against?
Everything in this poem
is a question.
Does that make it less
a poem?
I think of you hiking
against measured tides,
their going out
and coming in.
Can you make it through
without being swept away?
Daughter, you walk without me
and with me each day,
and your presence and
my absence
coalesce in the arch
of rocks sculpted by waves.
I crash on erratic tides
and am swept to shore
under a reliable moon
whose light strikes me.
I’m bewildered and wet,
a foam-covered shell.
illuminated,
collected the next day
by a child or child-at-heart.
I don’t know if I’m
asking for reassurance of your love
or reiterating mine for you.
If I were walking there,
tired, feet sore,
along the wild shore,
I’d light a lantern
and welcome lost sailors home,
crunch moonlight
among their
bones,
lift a silver flask
to the stars
and declare my vitality.
I am there with you.
You are here with me.
This is the way it is,
like the way of waves,
as it will always be.
Nan Rush is a poet and musician who has been published in Rolling Stone, Poets On, Yet Another Small Magazine, Thirteen, Rambunctious Review, Nebo and Torrid Journal. Her poetry sequence "I Dress in Red" appeared in the memoir anthology Impact, and she was honored to have her poem "Schoolgirl" included in the Adrienne Rich tribute anthology published by Split Oaks Press in 2012. She has completed a fantasy novel and is working on a memoir.