“Under the Boardwalk
down by the sea,
on a blanket with my baby,
that’s where I’ll be.”

—The Drifters

Growing up, Barbara Clark spent every summer at the Jersey shore. The space under the boardwalk holds many different memories. Unlike the beach which was light, hot, fun and spacious, the boardwalk provided a place, secret, cool and damp, with mysteries inherent in its debris, its smells, its whispered, forbidden adventures. And yet, looking out, there was the sparkling ocean, the sun and beach, bustling activity.

As a girl., Patria Brown spent summers near lakes in Oklahoma and Indiana. Not until her teens did she experience the festive, sleazy atmosphere of Atlantic City’s boardwalk. She remembers salt water taffy, tinny music, hot colors of women’s sun dresses and life guard’s muscles. The space under the boardwalk had not inspired her until Barbara showed her the paintings.

The shades and shapes evoked dark, shadowy places in Patria’s life, along with fantasies of Barbara’s childhood, but far more important, the works brought to her poems an expanded history of a place through its elements: the trees that died to make it, the wind that seasoned it and the destinies and longings of the souls that worked and played there.

Barbara Clark
Patria Brown
Menlo Park, California
February 1998

Seashells, you objects of desire,
you creatures of fear, come

Empty us of sorrow, fill our jars with
tears, beads of sand, the salty agate

Vows the ocean makes to land. Awake
sleepy sisters! You long for the skies,

Suck stars into tendrils, suns into
the crimson that colors other lives.

Out of the silt
in a pointed stone
from the sand
on the ocean floor,
the bubbles rise.

Loving them too
much, I cannot
breathe, afraid to
disturb the delicate
progress of froth.

Astonished, the foam
spirals, its circular
ascent guards us all,
irregular and certain,
above and below.

seaweed and shocks
the white coral escort
each unexpected turn,
as we burst together
towards the surface.

She takes them in — their lives abandoned,
exiled, interrupted. She swallows their bodies

into her cold wet recess, their feet bound
in gold and orange, their thighs lost in

a pink blue sunset. Tongues of the elders
line her womb in welcome. She drowns

their fears, stifles the cries for the not-yet-born,
not-yet-met, not-yet-finished. They will not fall

her way, for she will lure them, lull them, then
enfold them in the water of her endless lap.

Speaks the tall dance
of the forest, laughs light
as air, whispers rage.

She who was once the sun
now incites seeds, spreads
fires, screams cyclones.

Invisible, she storms free,
her force unbridled now
by any mother’s mercy.

Her eerie songs caress
the counters of the hills,
furrowed like the face

of the old woman she is.
Wrapping herself around
this world and the other,

she shudders, doors open.
A leaf of silver sighs, she
turns her breath on us.

Fresh from her dreams,
she sang in daybreak,
gentling tones, radiant
rhythms, singing roses
back to sleep, playing
in tones the violets tell.

She had filled herself
with softness, opening
her bow lips into praise
of the early hours, It was
a girl really, she saw there
beyond the glowing pier,

Her mother, a daughter,
the youngest grandmother,
in round liveliness—

Her soul, cheerful, and whole.

I love my inner darkness—
for lights whirl through
the quiet depths, for peace
lies in the velvet emptiness.
I long for the still places
that arise from the black
of the heart, of the heat,
of the hearth. I go eager
to lose my waywardness.

Love weaves its colorful strands
as I stand under the boardwalk.
The old ones wonder that I survive.

Why not? Earth has plans for me
here where fire and water meet,
wood pushes up, and wind insists

On change. Hurricanes teach me
to walk outside the path of wonder
as rain pours through the planks.

The trees’ pulse is all that matters.
This is my body and my blood,
they say. I receive and give to you.

What of this is of my own making?
I am part of something greater
than myself— outside the deluge

— Inside the ever-filling vessel.
I am engulfed by flows, the
storm not of my own making.

Instead, it is making me.

The wind has come
has blown
my house apart
and rain has entered
through the roof,
has seeped through
the hearth.

Still I wait for the flower,
the blossom of my love,
the jewel
of my inner world.

She shall emerge
from the disappointment of trees
from the oppression of Earth,

From the reflection of water.