The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: On Shifting Shoals by Joanne Durham

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Phone Conversation with My Husband about Our Final Resting Places

Listen, I know you want your ashes tossed
into the Gulf at Galveston, and I’ll be
at peace a mile out in the Atlantic,
but I’d still like to leave
some marker of my path on this earth.

So, let’s invest in fish plates!
I saw them today lining the boardwalk,
the length of a footprint and barely
three inches wide at the belly,
black slate smartly adorned
with yellow letters. You know how sweet
the boardwalk is here
on this tiny North Carolina island—
no Atlantic City casinos in blazing lights
or corn dog stands flanking every step,
just five blocks of wooden planks
between guest cottages with geraniums
blooming in window boxes
and dunes that sweep towards the sea.

Yes, we get our choice of inscription,
(a fifty-character limit). Almost all
of the hundred or so already sunken
into the boards engrave memory—
happy memories here, in loving
memory, and who wouldn’t remember
stepping off sand into foreverness,
curved rim of the horizon
all the cradle you need.

Hmm, I like that: They loved
the ocean and it loved them back, love,
(each other’s name). The only thing is,
it’s over the limit, and three loves
on a tiny bluefish’s back will sink it for sure.

I knew you’d understand! No bones
buried under a private stone. Here we’ll be
where everyone strolls in others’ footsteps
to watch sea oats sway, feel
the ocean breathe, and hear gulls calling
all of our names.