and dissolving.
In sand
pulled back
into the body
of the sea,
from the blue
house built on sand
balanced at the edge
of the world
I call you.
Drowning stars,
shipwrecks, and broken voices
move beneath the waves.
Here, at the open
center
of my ordinary heart
filling with sounds
of the resurrected,
in the dream
of the sea,
I call you
home.
“TANGLED” FROM PAWLEY’S ISLAND
We return to hear the waves returning
to the beach, one after the other, connecting
us like blood. Long before we came
here, we were listening, remembering
wind, spinning salt, uninterrupted
sunlight. This is a place where dreams
return, fish bones tangled in seaweed.
Rinsed clean and kept, whatever sorrows
come are folded into the sea’s
unbearable secrets.
“SHEM CREEK” FROM SHEM CREEK
I
The swollen earth splits its skin
into waterways, scattered
and winding in every
direction, releasing winds
that carve the land to shreds. Where
sun-filled clumps of spartina,
smoothed into supplicating
rows of heavy bent heads, crowd
the edges of Shem Creek;
marsh wrens build their tiny nests.
As if they are playing hide
and seek, porpoises appear
then disappear below the sea.
Fish birds littering the sky:
egrets, gray herons, and terns,
oyster catchers, pelicans,
gulls diving and turning through
the thick pink tinted air.
II
Weaving through miles of treeless
Subdivisions and strip malls,
the creek gathers everything
from oil, soap, and gasoline
to tires and refrigerators.
After the rain, run-off fills
the oyster beds with dioxins.
Arsenic and mercury
drift through the water in clumps
of invisible clouds
as if no one will notice.
III
Beyond the clutter of traffic,
tourist shops, seafood restaurants,
hotels, bars, and parking lots;
docked shrimp boats bob up and down
beside the docks, where the creek
pours silently into the sea.
“BARRIER ISLAND” FROM ISLE OF PALMS
Where nothing is certain, we awaken
to another night of delicate rain
falling as if it didn’t want to
disturb anyone. On and off
foghorns groan. The lighthouse beacon
circles the island. For hours, melancholy
waves tear whatever land we’re standing on.
Listen to the sea-rain dripping
through fog, suspended at the edge of earth
on a circle of sand where we are always
moving slowly toward land.
A STANZA FROM “THE SOUND OF YOUR OWN VOICE SINGING” FROM FULL OF GRACE
The weight of love is the heaviest burden
you have learned to carry.
In the silence of the heavens,
it’s a dream that wakes you
with the sound of your own voice singing.
About Marjory Wentworth
Marjory Wentworth by Andrew Allen
MARJORY WENTWORTH is the New York Times bestselling author of Out of Wonder, Poems Celebrating Poets (with Kwame Alexander and Chris Colderley). She is the co-writer of We Are Charleston, Tragedy and Triumph at Mother Emanuel, with Herb Frazier and Dr. Bernard Powers; and Taking a Stand: The Evolution of Human Rights, with Juan E. Mendez. She is co-editor with Kwame Dawes of Seeking, Poetry and Prose Inspired by the Art of Jonathan Green, and the author of the prizewinning children’s story Shackles. Her books of poetry include Noticing Eden, Despite Gravity, The Endless Repetition of an Ordinary Miracle, and New and Selected Poems. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize six times. She was the poet laureate of South Carolina from 2003 to 2020.
Wentworth serves on the board of advisors at the Global Social Justice Practice Academy, and she is a 2020 National Coalition Against Censorship Free Speech Is for Me Advocate. She teaches courses in writing, poetry, social justice, and banned books at the College of Charleston.
Marjory first met Dottie in the early 2000s at a party; the next evening Dottie showed up at her door with a bottle of wine and Marjory’s first book of poems and asked her if she could include one of her poems in the front of her forthcoming novel, Plantation. Their mutual love of the South Carolina Lowcountry bonded them, and their friendship was immediate. Both women were married to men named Peter; even their children were the same ages, and they remain friends to this day. Sometimes friends become family, and it doesn’t get better than that.
For further information, see marjorytwentworth.net.
Also by Marjory Wentworth
Out of Wonder
We Are Charleston
New and Selected Poems
Taking a Stand
The Endless Repetition of an Ordinary Miracle
Shackles
Despite Gravity
Noticing Eden
Essays and Recipes
Nathalie Dupree
Snails
All I wanted for my thirteenth birthday was to dine at the nearby French restaurant like a grown-up. After much parental negotiations, Juli, my best friend since first grade, and I arrived on the local AB&W bus at Longchamps just as it opened for dinner.
Dressed in our Sunday best, we were greeted by the tuxedoed maître d’ as if we were royalty as he led us to our candle-lit white-clad table. Holding out my chair, a waiter whisked a huge napkin onto my lap and a menu nearly as large as I into my hands. After a few moments of being dumbfounded by the multiplicity of choices we asked for help and left ourselves in their capable hands.
And so I began my romance with fresh parsley, garlic, escargots, and French food, a strange and exotic land to a Southern girl. Before they arrived, we could smell them, the garlic and butter also providing a welcome sizzle. “Escargots,” the waiter said, are very special in France.
The fat escargots, served on a scorching hot round tin plate with indentations for the delicate pale shells, seduced us with their aroma before we saw them. The waiter, delighted by our unabashed enthusiasm, taught us how to hold the snails with a special implement, as well how to pull the snails out of their shells with a tiny fork. We sopped the bread in the indentations holding the buttery remains, sated only when every last bit was gone.
Finally, we were presented with little bowls with rose petals floating in them and told to lightly run our fingers in these finger bowls to clean them from our excesses. From then on, I have always relished dipping bread in the garlic butter sauce, even preparing it when there are no escargots. Sometimes I use this sauce with fresh clams; other times mushroom caps; but have been known to eat just fresh home-baked bread, garlic, parsley from my garden, and good butter.
Juli and I had just become of the age to wear stockings and garter belts—long before panty hose. When we left the restaurant it began to rain. We huddled
