lucky stone

 

 Sometimes I smell mildew and pine,
 and I know it is my grandmother,
 I am again awakened by lace curtains
 touching my face, breeze blown through
 a screen, through a screen where I see
 a dirt path go into the woods, a gravel drive
 and her wooden garage where her
 Chevy waits. When she 
 pulls the doors open:  the smells of oil,
 gasoline, sawdust and age;
 I can jump in and sit beside her, just
 she and I while the others sleep,
 down Wooded Hill and across the Four Corners,
 past Saint Andrews and its fine steeple,
 the red brick schoolhouse across from the high school
 toward the North River Bridge through Norwell to the rotary, 
 where the sky opens up to the sea and gulls call
 above a row of shops and cafes and bookstores
 to the point where the lighthouse stands,
 has stood at the Atlantic shore through fog and storms
 and ages of lovers, sun burnt families who
 take over the cabins each year. We pull up 
 where we always pull up and sit on the bench 
 we always sit, out of her purse she hands me 
 a wrapped-in-waxed-paper piece of salt water
 taffy we suck on and chew and chew on 
 our thoughts until we search for a lucky stone, 
 granite wrapped by a white line, on the rocky beach, 
 storm-tossed smooth. I kept one she found 
 in my pocket, always have, to touch, to feel,
 to remember who I am and where I come from.