Essie Martin

After the river

Bean came back last night.
Told me he’s planning

his dad's funeral after four years
of watching stones sink

in the river.
After finding half a dozen dead minks

on the island I know how bones rot
in the woods, how their edges chalk

and peel away. I don’t like to think
about it, but I know that’s how

your dad must have escaped himself.
Bean is doing well, he’s dating

a beautiful girl, and is tall and
strong like he’s always been.

And the truth is, Bean has been losing
his whole life. He punched a hole

in the wall, lost four years to regret,
and now has to grieve for a man

who was possessed by something
large and dark. Something that drags

bones to the edge of the woods,
and leaves them there for Sons.

Essie Martin is a scientist by training, but a poet by nature. She loves watching the world through what we don’t understand, and what we have left to learn. This summer, she wrote from Hurricane Island where she was working as an Aquaculture Researcher. Her daily life on island includes maintaining their experimental aquaculture lease, scuba diving for scallop experiments and population surveys, and general daily island maintenance (boats, washing dirty dishes, fending off hungry seagulls, etc.). She offers this poem, observing the world as a woman, a chronically ill person, a sister, a daughter, a scientist.