circled our cottage door,
each flower cluster a replica
amassing blue in summer when blue
greeted me everywhere.
Cresting sand dunes, wind whipping
my towel into leggings, I saw
a blue line so stretched out
it had to curve to stay on earth.
Tugged skyward by the taut, unreeling string, I followed
my box kite as it rose, swooped into blue, and when it fell,
I flung it again into the morning wind. Bayside
by afternoon, balanced on snail-coated rocks,
I netted blue-shell crabs, held them
at arms length as Father had taught me,
and, on my way home, listened to their claws scratching
against the inside of my pail.
Evenings, on the screened porch reading by a lamp
set on a table with wobbly legs, I sat side by side
with Nancy Drew. In her blue roadster, we were two
independent girls, driving into the curve of mystery.
After bedtime prayers, I remember distant trains
whistling, always whistling on a straight line
to somewhere curved, somewhere
beyond our cottage, and the blue hydrangeas.