April on the Great Highway

Boat on her side at the stone seawall. I shudder into my coat, too light, watch the sand scurry around the keel, the note left by its owner, begging donations. A post office box. Funds to get craft to the sea.

You're walking around, holding your camera. Recording. Tall, like your brother (the one I almost married), thin with an illness ... or is it just depression? (Your daughters hope.) The past comes up and twists itself around my ankles. Like cool smoke on the floor or the purring of a nearly silent cat. An echo in the ether.

Down the beach there is a couple slogging through the sand; ahead of them runs their dog, 80 pounds of joy, wind at her back, ruffled red, fur and tongue. Smiling, she is masked. Toes gripping sand but remembering snow, mushing down the Great Highway.

They say April is the cruelest month; I watch you wander in denial, a house with many rooms. You say maybe lupus skewed the test results, maybe you are not really Positive. You have heard this somewhere, but won't check it out, won't get a second, confirming or denying test.

Blue hesitates smoke. You say maybe everything will be OK, and I say Yes. Running my hands, rusted rails. Thinking of water, an edge.

In the shelter of the boat, on the back of your coat, I lay out the cards. Sitting on my heels, wrapped and shivered. The pictures are all beautiful and Death does not come up. Only growth, spring green, moving on. You smile. "There are many," I say, "paths to the beach."