Little Dyke Beach

Photo: Anne Wyman

By Joel Robert Ferguson:

First off, let's say that which can
go without saying, that the stony
beach is not the stretch it once was,
when my legs were brief from ground
to body and I held the mouth 
of a broken shell to my ear 
and heard nothing.

It's a short walk to the beach house
the one we’d always then turn
back at, ever crunching over the pebbles,
blue and pink, that outline the upper
reaches of the inter-tidal, before we return
to the town, the county hospital, where
what must happen will happen.

Prairie kid, born Winnipegger,
downplaying the duress of Confusion Corner,
your feet in the Atlantic, if
the muck of the Minas Basin
at low tide can be called ocean.

It can, if
the roofs and new asphalt
where the old folks used
to lay out the dulse with its snails
drying in the sun (to hell with toxins) 

for sale or snack,
if that dredged-forest could be called land. 

It can.

***

Joel Robert Ferguson is the author of the poetry collection The Lost Cafeteria (2020, Signature Editions). He grew up in the Nova Scotian village of Bible Hill and now divides his time between Winnipeg and Montreal, where he is finishing his Masters in English Literature at Concordia University.