Walking the Beach, September 10, 2001
I like seashells, Jake announces as he holds up periwinkle
after periwinkle, as if each one’s so different
it can’t be left where it is. I like periwinkles,
he says, the way kids do
when they’ve just learned a word and won’t keep
from the pleasure of saying it again
and again. I like limpets. I like mussels. I like barnacles.
I like razor clams. I like spoon shells.
Is there nothing on the beach this kid doesn’t like?
He can’t just pick up a shell,
he’s got to declare his degree of commitment to it,
as if, at three and a half, he knows that it’s not enough
to fall in love; you’ve got to make the world
understand just how much.
I like canoe shells, Opa, but the big, spirally ones too.
and the ones with ripples. And this one
with scribble on it. Jake greets each day
as someone might welcome a long-lost cousin
who’s crossed thousands of miles
to meet him. If these shells had the patience
to travel such great distance to get here and were willing to be
broken in the effort, then he sees it as his and Opa’s job
to gather them all. But it’s exhausting
liking so many things: shells the color of old dentures,
clams even the seagulls are tired of, the ruined armor
of horseshoe crabs. Jake throws himself into his work.
Life would be so much easier for him
if he didn’t need to see, touch, know everything,
feel that it’s all up to him
to make sense of the universe. The world can’t help
but disappoint this child. Finally
it will have to break the heart of a boy determined
to pick up every snagged fishing line, washed-in buoy,
every tar-stained dog welk, heel of a slipper shell,
ponderous ark, spotted moon.
Jake’s got a whole beach to cover
and only so much time.
by Christopher Bursk
from The First Inhabitants of Arcadia
University of Arkansas Press, 2006