Cherie Hunter Day: LAND’S END

The county road peters out in the parking lot of a lobster pound but the land keeps going, jutting into the bay. To get to the summer cottages visitors travel a double-rutted dirt road that narrows to a single mud-packed path around boulders on the final approach to the mud flats. Beyond a sandy spit granite ledges hold the last accumulation of soil. It’s enough to support the salt-sprayed and wind-pruned sumac and bayberry bushes to the height of a grade school child, not even the tallest in her class.

saving bits of shell
from the beach where we scattered
her ashes
the tint of red in the shale
bleeding iron

by Cherie Hunter Day
San Diego, California