Aging with the Seasons

Today marked the first chilly morning of a new season with gusts of swirling air passing through DC’s architectural wind-tunnels and I realized it’s really fall. I’m not sure where the summer went or if we even had one, considering the lack of stickiness and intense 100 degree days, but I’m not sure if seasons really matter any longer with climate change and anomalies galore. My younger sister now lives in a place where seasonal change is minimal but we grew up in a place with four distinct separations of weather patterns and at least once a year we always went to the beach, which sometimes was colder in the summer than late winter. Rather than write a long introduction about this poem, I’ll just let it speak for itself and let the reader take away from it freely. A first draft of this was written about 12 years ago and while it’s changed a little over time, the meaning has remained the same. Revisiting this one today amidst the onset of fall makes me smile.

Message in a Bottle

We watched our shadowed outlines

walk along the shore

and hers would bend to touch her hand

as she reached for a shell.

She stepped inside my footprints

before the tide filled them up

and fed me sandcakes and saltwater

after burying me alive.


Turning cartwheels she spun and whirled,

landing delicate as a leaf,

yet my attempt

landed with a thud

and I sank into the softened earth

falling miles into the sea.


It was there I have remained,

despite a tireless struggle,

breathing rocks and playing

with my new friends the sea anemones

flooding and drying, filling and sanding.


They say one day her shadow


will again catch up to mine.

But the days are long and lonely

for me out at sea,

and the winds are sandpaper

scratching at my face.

Perhaps she too remembers

this beach, our sacred place.