I saw it from a distance at low tide.
I was fourteen, on vacation.
What beach was I on?
Who was with me?
It seemed such a fragile thing,
an extinct sea creature
lying on its side in the water,
drifting.
Later, I read of its collision
with the Stockholm,
off Nantucket Sound,
many passengers rescued,
forty-six perished:
May their souls rest in peace.
The world fills with tragedies:
from nature’s course
or human failings in all
their maddening forms.
But I was fourteen, on vacation,
thoughts of the sea I loved
upended, uncertainty’s
power now in sharp focus.
Who was with me that day?
What beach was I on?
Kathleen Aponick
Kathleen Aponick is a former teacher and textbook editor. Her poetry collections include The
Descendant’s Notebook (Kelsay Books, 2020), Bright Realm (Turning Point, 2013), and two
chapbooks: The Port (Finishing Line Press, 2006), and Near the River’s Edge (Pudding House
Publications, 1995). She also co-edited, with Paul Marion and Jane Brox, Merrimack: A Poetry
Anthology (Loom Press), a collection of poems by poets who lived in towns along the Merrimack
River in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in many publications,
including Poetry East, Notre Dame Review, Hollins Critic, and Paterson Literary Review.
Kathleen lives in Andover, Massachusetts, with her husband, Tony.
