Pining for Home

Draped over water’s edge at dusk, branches needle
Poquito Bayou. A lonesome stand of Florida pines
faces a deciduous tree line dotted with civilization.
A bridge span, cell tower, low-rise condos and homes
border the scene. A sunset’s sienna reflections ripple
as mellow waters fade to shadowed charcoal inshore.

In loblolly shade, two legs dangle from exposed root.
Feet dip into the brackish border of land and water,
like bait on thick fishing line, to snag a lost memory.
A splash of feet speak: we knew a time before
the plunder. We never walked today’s agglomeration
of boat-docked, fenced-in, hefty waterfront homes.

The body remembers how we traced sandy trails
to secret fishing holes and caught unearthly creatures.
It remembers how we held a bat in knee-deep water,
hit a tennis ball into blue and bolted like barracuda
to imaginary bases. It remembers racing to the island,
lazing on the dock—before Opal washed them away.

The body remembers how dolphins evaded our chase
with out-of-reach breaches and leaps. It remembers
watching walls of wet weather wash in. It remembers
the weight of rain. The body remembers handfuls
of goopy, soft, scooped-up and tossed baby jellyfish
and the fierce sting of grown ones nettled into flesh.

The body remembers what left; how we moved away:
people, pines, an indigenous playground. In darkness,
legs lift from a root and feet shuffle in salted sand.
In the lonesome, in still waters, in the dusk of life—
memories reside. A soul ponders how pine roots run
so deep in sand, revels in the briny weight of rain.

Isn’t that the way from birth? We feel our way home.

After a nomadic military childhood, Lisa Kamolnick planted herself in the sugar-white sands of northwest Florida beaches. In 2007, she traced an ancestral trail and settled in northeast Tennessee highlands. She holds a B.A. in English from University of Florida. Lisa’s work explores human nature, the human condition, the natural world and what lies between and beyond. Her poems are published or forthcoming in Black Moon Magazine, Mildred Haun Journal, Ink to Paper, and Tennessee Voices.