Delaware Bay
Norbury’s landing:
horseshoe crabs
fill the beach,
red knots run
in the surf
snatching up
the protein rich
crab eggs
(fuel for their flight,
from the the arctic circle to
Tierra del Fuego),
as the blue-green waves
gently lap
the shore.
Expansive estuaries team
with life,
amber waves of phragmites
with their
tassled tops
dancing
in the breeze..
In the deep black mud
of the marsh,
fiddler crabs
scurry into
their burrows,
along the inlet
at Turkey Point
Where we catch blue-claws
in cubical crab traps
baited with menhaden,
which leaves an iridescent
oil slick floating
on the dark
water, where
once running down a trail
a razor blade of a marsh grass
sliced my leg open.
Rickety fishing shacks
rest on stilts above
the browninish-green water
around Money Island.
The bait and snack shop
with it’s weather worn,
faded facade
of white and turquoise.
A cast plastic shark
8 feet long
above handprinted letters,
ICE,
CRABS,
a gas pump
at the end of the dock.
Tea colored water
stained by the cedars
of the Pinelands,
rush through
sluice gates,
a channel cuts
through the beach,
where the gulls laugh
loudly on the sand bars,
among the shallow tide
pools
where, as kids,
we sought
seahorses, starfish,
pipefish and hermit crabs
for our aquarium.
The camping trips
to Bay Lanes
Campground,
where I found some
joy and mystery,
quiet solitude,
in miserable childhood.
Walking the beach alone
scouring
the tide line.
plastic bottles
used as buoys,
fishing net floats,
styrofoam,
a dried out carcass
of a seagull,
bleached
bones and feathers,
a bottle with a message
in it.
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