The Gift

After the wind-bruised sea
    furrowed itself back
        into folds of blue, I found
            in the black wrack

a shell called the Neptune—
    tawny and white,
        spherical,
            with a tail

and a tower
    and a dark door,
        and all of it
            no larger

than my fist.
    It looked, you might say,
        very expensive.
            I thought of its travels

in the Atlantic’s
    wind-pounded bowl
        and wondered
            that it was still intact.

Ah yes, there was
    that door
        that held only the eventual, inevitable
            emptiness.

There’s that—there’s always that.
    Still, what a house
        to leave behind!
            I held it

like the wisest of books
    and imagined
        its travels toward my hand.
            And now, your hand.