She lived along the Atlantic coast and had a collection of lobster pots by the porch and her lawn was trimmed for croquet smelled of clams at low tide the house was set near barnacle rocks just beyond a stand of trees.
I found her by looking in a phonebook next to her name it said, "Poetry Journals," so I called the number, and said I was on my way. "Is that ok?" I added hesitantly.
“Well, yes,” she laughed, “You can come buy one.” I passed the sign for fresh eggs and arrived at a black wrought iron gate that said, "Poetry Journals - 2 for $5.00."
“You’re the first one who’s ever made it all the way to the house for a journal…” “In four dozen years," she said. Then she asked, “What’s your name?”
“I don’t really have a name," I said. She nodded and understood. She'd heard from Byron that the Banshee drags souls out to sea but sometimes the nameless manage to float back looking for poetry these lost ones are like driftwood bringing a sense of chilly dusk a retrospective on the sea in a seashell appearing by happenstance at low tide "yes, I hear a distant mumble of waves," she might have said of me I was one of the lost turning her porch into a quay of despair the first one in almost 50 years who had made it so far to latch on until high tide when the rush of sea returned washed me out again clinging for dear life to a raft of poetry
copyright 2015 Mary Winslow all rights reserved re-post of an old favorite