Inexorable
by Hilary Sallick
all we wanted / ALL WE WANTED
I copy these lines
from Gary Snyder’s poem Oysters
about a day of gift
and abundance writing them here
at the top of my page
because of how he saw fit to repeat
himself and in caps
to make sure I wouldn’t miss it —
because look how much I miss
even when it’s right before me
I’m at my table in the kitchen
the windows wide open
sparrows chirping and Judi next door
has laundry going the scent
of the products she uses becomes
the air is part
of the morning I picture
how she rises early
and starts her chores not easily
because her knees are giving out
and she copes with pain
in many forms but she’s a worker
she keeps going like her mother
and father before her
and her sister her brother all the family
with laughter and chatter with tools
in their hands coming to help
to sweep to tidy the little garden
to prune the rhododendron and
plant geraniums in boxes to brighten
the driveway and now I see
through long leafy mulberry branches
my neighbor on the other side
has come out on her porch watering can
in hand and she inspects her
pink begonias gently then
pours the water she wears
a bathrobe tied loose
at her waist for she’s a late-
riser a night owl
and Mom and Da in Maine
must be setting out bowls for cereal
maybe slicing a peach or rinsing
blueberries step by step
through the morning
and outside their windows
the tide is low coming in
over seaweed beds making pools
full of stories nothing
is ever boring it all keeps
changing this street our faces
the trees the water’s surface my own
body also some things stay
the same or change so very
slowly that it’s hard
to imagine it those rocks along the shore
for example are implacable
always though some sudden
event once must have
thrust them there
in their form and condition
so the waters could shape
their actions the pressing the lapping
the crashing as the barnacles mussels
grasses heathers seaweeds also
do their work — all kinds of gardens
and organisms
including myself my own feet
creeping or leaping or
stepping gently all of us
over the lifetimes
crouching down to peer into
a red- and orange- and gold-
walled pool with minute
fish and insects and snails and
leaves or pods waving
in the water —
how many times have I tried
to describe
these things I’ve seen
and felt
is it possible that I’ve
been given all I wanted
how can that be
why should I have this
and still not know it
except when my heart
breaks
Hilary Sallick is the author of Love is a Shore (Lily Poetry Books, 2023), long-listed for the Massachusetts Book Award; and Asking the Form (Cervena Barva Press, 2020). Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Inflectionist Review; Pensive; January House; SoFloPoJo; and elsewhere. A teacher with a longtime focus on adult literacy, she lives in Somerville, MA.
