NANCY HUGGETT

For Better or for Worse

I married the ocean, now life is a daily 
drowning. When the tide retreats, I lie 
beached, until I can push myself up to comb 
the wrack zone for treasure. Sun-bleached 
sand dollars—only the dead, periwinkle
blues, orbicular moon snails, shafts of razor 
clams spiking the sand—cracked carapaces 
of the once-alive creeping beneath the benthic 
foam. Also, a rusted shovel, bottles leaching 
micro-poisons, plastic soldiers done with defending 
all the borders we have built, lying half-buried, half-
bent, rifles flaccid in their hands like old penises 
or dowsing rods. Damned if I’ll let them 
capture and contain what flows fluid 
over earth’s rough, tumbled body—wild veins 
of salmon feeding Sitka spruce, holy wells 
and chalk springs long past weeping,
incantations I hear from our bedroom 
window at night. Lately, the roar of rebellion 
rages through hollers and hills, uncontested 
uprisings sweep bungalows and babies 
downstream, stranding safe havens in wastelands 
of mud while I watch from the edge, reaching out 
my one sweaty hand to rake what I can 
from the current. But there’s no catching hold 
of the chaos. No wrenching control of tides 
or turn. Just this diurnal drowning, my vows, 
water remembering where she once flowed.