I
When the Atlantic heaved itself at the sky,
crashed inland, raping the tidal rivers,
my friend told me, “This is the time of atonement.”
I have never been sure of meanings
of sin, atonement, forgiveness.
I wonder whether the great spirit knows, itself,
or cares. Whenever I swam in the York River
with its taste of the sea, all my sins,
such as they were, floated away,
and I was ready for new ones.
When the hurricane washed a huge whelk ashore from the
Mattaponi,
I carried it home and kept it three days in a bowl.
But the sacrilege was heavy upon me,
and I drove back thirty miles to return it to its beach,
casting it back to the river god;
it may have been itself the river god.
I think perhaps this was sin and almost instant atonement.
Did you forgive me then, Lord of creation,
River God, Whelk with the strange pulsing foot?
My Yom Kippur guest for three days in a bowl of salted water
waiting for my change of heart.
II
But another transgression has weighed upon me so sadly
that for fifty years I have, yes, atoned in spirit.
It was hot summer when we fished for food,
caught bluegreen crabs, hitching along out of the net,
on their way to the cooking pot. We were hungry and heartless.
But the day we netted the old turtle and we hung it up
and cut off its head, I was jubilant, then uneasy,
and now uselessly horrified and contrite.
It was so venerable, so huge, lord of its little creek,
watcher of the tides, living, living.
Over and over I have thought: forgive.