Well Kept Secrets

I shiver in the late June wind,

Who knew I would be wearing my corduroy over shirt.

I was swimming only a week ago, but today is made for walking,

and walking it will be, along the rocky coast here in Maine,

the rocky coast that has comforted me

for the past thirty some odd years.

Ah how fortunate we are to have rocks,

especially to those of us who know how well they keep secrets, filing them away in precise rock alphabet order, just in case

one needs to visit them in a year or two,

to reexamine a memory of the past.

What a pity that some folks think that rocks don’t move, don’t feel,

and worse, that rocks hold no wisdom, the ancients will tell you otherwise

no matter where those ancients are from.

I have carefully placed the tears of sorrow when I first arrived

those were the tears for my mother, time passed

and tears for a brother, a husband and a nephew,

all of which poured out upon the seaweed covered rocks,

salt water anointing the placement, as each found her way through the crevices where stealthy seagulls also place their secrets.

Today, I will hear the my rocks applaud me, simply for returning.

today, we will laugh together, because we know

that all things are blessed, and transformed

in God’s great oceans.

a.c.tomasulo