By Christine Jackson
An arm of land crooks into saltwater.
At the end, our house, once
the gentle blue of a summer berry.
Last year’s lightning bolt
smashed walls, blew us across
the yard. Gill’s sense wandered.
I push my bike to the edge
of the main road and stare
across the peninsula
at boards, shingles. The path
crosses a saltwater meadow
dotted with yellow and white.
I have to look, make myself
search for traces of the old
Gill before his sense wandered.
Rehab helped restore my legs.
I pedal my bike through blotches
of devil’s paintbrush, white calamint.
Charred timbers crisscross,
collapsed into fragments, like
shell bits in a dead mollusk,
No clues to the mystery.
Gill lives here now, tangled,
confused, lost to lightning
Christine Jackson is retired from her day job, professor of literature and creative writing at a South Florida university. She continues to clock in on a life-long night shift writing poetry. Her work appears in an array of online journals, including Ekphrastic Review, Verse-Virtual, South Florida Poetry Journal, New Verse News, and Anti Heroin Chic.