In Praise of Falling

Narrative

Narrative October surf washes up details from stories I’ve quit trying to plot— a whole walnut shell bleached white, its ridges filed smooth, the halfdissolved lozenge of a brick, a goat carcass decomposing on a nest of sea grapes. What happened to you along the way? is the question you ask a changed friend, or a truck’s rearview mirror cocked toward your face. How red sea glass tumbled into the shape of New Jersey, how the dime-sized sand dollar, thin as Eucharist, rode the summer tumult to the beach—I have no answers for now. My ex visits in the form of a charcoal-colored gull landing on a driftwood plank, autumn-red beak. She lifts two wings. Nothing is what it seems: the crab’s lost leg  Dumesnil PGS:Layout 1 4/28/09 12:32 PM Page 55 is a sprig of ice plant rusted orange, the bleached clam shell is a plastic milk bottle cap.What made me believe I could predict my life, decipher this code? A stone the size of my hand— its granite surface etched by crooked white lines—is not a map.A flock of pipers’ one-inch beaks stitch crooked paths into wet sand. I’m done searching for patterns.Today, this trail ends at my planted feet.  Dumesnil PGS:Layout 1 4/28/09 12:32 PM Page 56 ...