I.
Here everything turns brackish:
water seeking to run clear
cannot escape the salt tide, carrying
the flotsam and jetsam of years until
scraps of paper, discarded hair ribbons,
plastic bottles block the stream’s flow.
II.
How do I grieve what never was:
a love never acknowledged,
a memory time has faded
to the texture and stillness
of unprimed canvas,
where colors pool and collect
like estuary water.
III.
Salt stiffens the reeds,
paralyzes the heart’s tissue
with tears that find no outlet.
IV.
In Provincetown,
the wharf crumbles at the sea’s edge.
Commercial Street unfurls its daily pageant.
This day of Carnival, the street becomes
an Enchanted Forest.
Young men and old men
sprouting horns and tails,
women of all shapes and sizes,
in green and glittery finery
parade in hope and pride.
V.
A rising tide of joy carries us out to sea
on a rhinestone wave.
No voice or body is constricted,
tails grow out of butts
like a congregation of Dr. Seuss creatures.
Today is a day to flaunt
the colors of the rainbow,
past the estuary to the cool waters
beyond the far side of the breakwater
where herons roam and oysters cleanse the water
under the yearning height of the sky.
VI.
At the old Days lumberyard
we do the daily work of creation,
capturing Nature’s beauty in paint and words.
Banners trail from beams. Artists wear headbands
like members of a secret gang.
VII.
Ebb and flow, cleansing, clearing:
lungs pumping
clean air in, bad air out.
White egret poised
like the shadow of breath:
I sketch you above
the running water of the page.
Elissa Greenwald is a retired English teacher who received an MFA from William Paterson University in 2024. Her poems and essays appear in Brevity, Humana Obscura, Miracle Monocle, and other journals. She has visited Cape Cod, where this poem is set, for over 50 summers.