Seadrift Texas

by Rebbeca Bretz,
Portrait Artist of the Seadrift Legacy Project

On a sunny Sunday in Seadrift
I wander down to the docks.

Intoxicated by the bay breeze,
I play hide-and-seek with
brown pelicans and perched gulls.
Seemingly unamused, they stare back at me;
the crunch of this seashell path
has betrayed me.

Beneath a lone tree, a chair sits in shade.
Pollock’ed with bird squat.
Armies of ants, march stem-to-stern
at work in their bottle cap and beer tab universe.

Bleached white and sun-baked, the shrimp boats come in.
Exhaust fume-enshrouded fishermen
in slimed white boots
work in transfer their catch.
Their mouths move, but I hear nothing,
only the baritone hum of the boat engine.
I watch them work awhile.
Mystified by their gadgets and nets,
I guess they must speak a different language
that those of us not in the white boot club
may understand or appreciate.

Crunching back toward my reality,
I see sparrows playing Labyrinth in
teetering stacks of shiny neon-yellow crab baskets.
I pass a handsome craft in dry dock
with long rubber gloves drying vertically,
waving their faded red-and-yellow salute
to the passing of an era.