by Jenni Marie Van Horn
DRIFTWOOD GROWS
Driftwood grows grey,
worn with the spray and thirsty for shade,
drinking the brine daily,
it thins and forgets the ferned forest, the moss, and the canopy.
Far away,
this bit of stick bobbing,
between sea loam and fog roaming untethered,
it tires of treading, flotsam and seafarer too soon familiar.
With terns,
which follow the routes endless as oceans and rest on debris,
drying wings on orange plastic buoys or, better,
these beams, before flying,
and gone;
so driftwood journeys on,
slipping through swells and grasping at whitecaps,
a while on beaches eroded; the road yet advances and pulls and laps,
and lifts;
when the trunks are tossed on another strand,
we drag them with our children,
dig holes in the sand, sink posts, plant walls, build a lean-to to rest in,
for an hour. But tonight—here’s the mystery—
beneath the shore pine where the sea winds blow
and seated on the gathered lost logs,
we feast on old stories while the fire burns low:
of dry bones in a valley, of freezing stones
awakened by a lion’s breath, of snow-cracking
crocuses or the white tree’s sapling,
of wanderers come home at last.
So, though
the westerly whips at the surf, our hymns
raise shelters, hold us to earth, for they flow
to the One who sends green sap to grey limbs,
who buries the driftwood and then says, “Grow.”
JENNI MARIE VAN HORN
Jenni Marie Van Horn is from the West Coast of Canada but has spent years in East Africa with her family, serving in language development. As a result, she has at least thirteen boxes of books stored across three continents. In addition to working, navigating seasons of transition, and home-educating her children, she snatches moments to write. She has a background in medieval literature and linguistics and is currently editing a long-overdue poetry collection following her own journey with secondary infertility.