No complacencies here amid the loud bark
of his parrot and the hurricane in search
of socks and the delight in murky windows
and the steam push frothing
out of the bathroom. Wanda
throws sugar into a steaming mug,
dressed for summer’s version of church:
long skirt, quick braid, print pullover.
Paul’s daughter is wearing the jeans of the day
before, when she waded in the ocean
for shells, and the line of salt at her calf
is a white wave of remembrance.

Wanda asks her to take them off,
so she can wash them, and to get another
pair. Paul thinks of the sea left in salt
on her jeans. The great fishes far below
that turn in a bellow of their hollowness,
the gills that roar with hidden air.
The salt on her jeans is shellfish and coral,
the reefs of mussels and undulating weeds,
the jetsam of gulls on the sand. The salt
is of her and what will be.
 
They are rushing to prepare for church
and they do not know yet where to go.
Wanda is in the phone book, looking
for the morning’s salvation. Paul wants to stroll
to the ocean’s edge. Once there, he will take communion
of fish, great fingers full of sand. The taste of brine
comes to him, and a question for God: why not this sea?
Why not a beginning in the surf
and its repetition? It all began in water,
and ended once as well. At the ocean
there are rocks, and Paul has climbed
them many times in search of a better look
at the sky.  Great black rocks without the glow
of anthracite, wet with salt and water,
primed for a new beginning to his faith.
Why is the ocean not church enough?

Wanda has found a place. It is a mile
from where they had clams last night.
Paul sees it as clapboards with a sign
trailer in front, and remembers that it said
All Vacations Begin Here. It had no shrubs,
no cedars or yews like the churches at home.
He knows he won’t like it. The congregation
will be strange. He will sing though,
picture a beard of seaweed, barnacled skin,
a prophet on the rocks by the sea,
knowledge of the deep in his eyes,
and his eyes will shimmer like the insides
of mussel shells. They will reflect something
of the ocean, and its match with the sky.