Dan Barton
​​​Monsoon 2016

*

Dear Sympathy 14

Thank you for taking the time
to send a card. Haven’t you
arranged shells on the beach
before stained-glass troughs: sand
dollars and velvet egg cockles
laid out to bleach. What we make
is only echo
of ourselves. It feels
like occasion: conchs that hold
in their spiraled hearts
memories of their home
turned to catch the sea
breeze. What am I
to find if I picked a shell and listened
except the hush of waves
tossing back what has been taken
into themselves? The coast
holds nothing
constant and the beach we walked once
recedes as much
as returns. We only want​
to watch the tide
rising in white-capped swells; ground
slipping from around our feet
as waves recoil
delights us, but when water cuts
deep into earth our hearts
flood. Where once
I saw others dive
into waves, weeds tangle
half-buried around a sand castle;
abandoned, it concedes
itself to sea and clouds
of foam, turning wet glass,
​shattering as it dries.

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Dan Barton grew up getting lost in the woods around his home in Georgia before going abroad to live in Malawi. Currently, he resides in Texas where he received his MFA from Texas State University. His work has appeared in About Place Journal and East Coast Literary Review.​