Driftwoood

My mother had always been fond of driftwood.

Whenever we went to any ocean shore

Or lake she’d float up and down the beach looking

For water’s discards.

It was the sentiment of those tree fragments

Stripped of their bark, tiny wormholes piercing

Them like emptied capillaries, which appealed

To her sense of time.

Perhaps they came from giant maple fallen

Into some distant tributary far north

Of us in Washington two decades ago,

Stranded just for her.

Some child could have broken a branch from an oak

To send a gnarled boat tumbling down currents

Of the San Joaquin, polished by granite stones

From Yosemite.

Or a cedar’s lofty top, weakened by wind,

Could have toppled into the Sultan River

Bobbed its way to the Pacific and so down

To the Point Reyes sand.

She saved these wandering orphans of the sea

When my brothers and sisters were young.

I used to look at them but not think how far

We would drift from her.

May 27, 1988