Morning at Legoe Bay, Lummi Island
for John, my brother
by Luci Shaw

April 24. Not a day that seemed in any way special,

except as a mind marker of the morning we ferried

out to the Island. We watched a new house being framed

to a song of saws and percussion, all yellow pine

and cedar sawdust, a skeleton of possibilities.

At the beach we spread a blue tarpaulin on the rocks

(unyielding, but warm against our bones) and

sanctified the shore by dozing there, in the sun.

Later we wandered, irresolute, loaded our pockets

with stones. I took photos of you, and of the twisted roots

of old logs beached at random angles, oval pebbles

in their elbows and groins where the tide's chaos

had lodged them, like cabochons in free-form

platinum settings. Just days before

you'd told me about the small stone lodged in you,

the clawed cell, visible only on the slides, the scans,

that shadowed every thought, though we laughed absurdly

from time to time. We were watching for signs, but

the little waves in the sun, in the shoreÕs reflection,

danced like a million silver tongues thrusting in and out,

a language we couldn't translate. The wind probed

from the north, chill, and we let the sun search us out

on that day, a day like any other, and like no other.

Poems reprinted by permission of the author.