I have sent my sister down the beach
in search of buried treasure, and she
will find it. I know because I hid it
in well-marked mounds
and only just beneath the surface
(for she is little, and despairs quickly)—
small caches of colored glass
the waves have polished on the sand
until each piece is finger-smooth and singular.
These for us are jewels, a fiction
she only half-believes
(but this is a time when half-believing
is sufficient), humoring me
in return for my attention,
me allowing her to humor me
that I might please her.
While she is finishing breakfast,
I gather this booty for her
at the water’s edge, where it gleams wetly
among pebbles and periwinkles
and stones just right for skipping,
until I have a rich handful. Then
I lose my find again for her amusement,
for she is at that awkward stage
(when does it end?) where joy
gives way without apparent cause
to petulance and glassy boredom.
Hours later, when we leave the beach,
tired and a little browner,
perhaps she takes her plunder with her,
perhaps it lies forgotten in the sand,
changed once more into broken Coca-Cola
bottles and other washed-up flotsam.
But now she reappears to drop a delighted handful
onto the blanket, then runs off in search of more,
her bare feet leaving small impressions in her wake,
her useless bikini top askew.
The pile left behind is glitteringly beautiful—
incandescent rounded scraps of an almost opaque emerald green
that like these brown and amber shards
(precious stones whose names we do not know)
began as beer and soda bottles;
small, glowing pearls
from coffee cups and shattered dinner plates
swept romantically enough maybe
from the galleys of swamped schooners;
translucent, deep blue sapphires (sapphires, we think,
are such a shade of blue);
pale green-white uncut diamonds
that mottle as they dry;
and best because the rarest,
mysterious wave-shaved rubies.
All this happened years ago, of course,
when the wishes I was called upon to grant
were modest, when pretty litter
was all it took to charm my sister
into pirate happiness. Now,
although she may still find lake glass lovely,
it casts no spell, and I
must look elsewhere for the jetsam
to lighten her boredom
and transmute her grown sorrows
into childlike joy.
These words are all I have, and they must do
(they are no more specious than those gems were paste).
Neither of us cares much any more
for hidden meanings, so
I will simply say to her, look here
to find some waif reclaimed by happiness,
a string of sunny, sandy afternoons,
a hoard of closeness in day-bright open spaces.
Redemption, after all, requires very little.
So take these gimcrack bits of glass,
a bloodstone syllable or two,
and leave this life awhile for the one you knew.
There is nothing so small it does not matter,
nor so marred it cannot charm.
There is nothing so common it cannot save you.