There are dunes greater than these hillocks of sand, these heaped piles with their patchy grass and lone tree. Yes, the shoreline has changed and that is something. I came here two years ago and could find the trail leading to the other trail and the way back and now can’t. Wind and water erected a wall topped in green and there are no longer any clear signs. Pictures confirm that all is not what it once was. Let us speak of these others, then, these dunes west of here that mimic desert, if clouds serve. They change, too, but renew. River and creek and streams and a wind that slows and reverses, each doing its part. Look: from here where we have trudged, set down on the wet packed sand, and awoken at dawn, we can see all is as it was when windmills burnt to the ground, and, too, were rebuilt. And stars.
Photo by jim gade on Unsplash.
Kelly R. Samuels
Kelly R. Samuels is the author of two poetry collections—Oblivescence (Red Sweater Press) and All the Time in the World (Kelsay Books)—and four chapbooks: Talking to Alice (Whittle Micro-Press), To Marie Antoinette, from (Dancing Girl Press), Words Some of Us Rarely Use (Unsolicited Press), and Zeena/Zenobia Speaks (Finishing Line Press). She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee with work appearing in The Massachusetts Review, River Styx, Sixth Finch, Denver Quarterly, and RHINO. She lives in the Upper Midwest. Find her on her website or Instagram.