Ghosts of Silver Beach Road

From the Play

BOB:
Wild geese flocking the Virginia coast parachute down my mother’s chimney
to nest with mallards,
their black eyes shining like berries in firelight,
bringing on sermons and elegiacs
from an astral slide through the deck of time

How the Chesapeake Bay screams within me
Back come the shingled cottage and a gibbous moon
over Silver Beach Road,
tall pines grown feverish in wind, swaying
with psionic rhythm

I lift from shadows my brothers and cousins tumbling from their beds:
a vegetable garden, darkness so deep I can’t see my hands,
my father’s anger, boiling over,
my mother, close to dying, breaking water and blood
on the front porch steps
before a brother came

This is my Brother Bill
(Bill steps forward)
And this is the Ghost of my sister
(Sister steps forward)

BILL:
the murmuring beach at night under shivering stars,
limp sailors, impaled by spars

and rusted bolts from the wreckage of freighters,

whisper of tuck, taffrails and mizzen, cathead and coming,
devotees of motion,

turning to bone, keeping time with the heavens
Huge splinters of ships basking in moonlight half buried in sand
speak of hulks having come from Japan and the Korean Straight

bearing wounds from battle

GHOST of SISTER:
Pirates roam the rippling tides of cloud and sky in buckle boots,
diamond crosses hanging from their necks, initialed pistols at their belts,

slung purses–fat with powder, and pantaloons of silk,
shirts tucked in to wrap their genitals and, over their shoulders,

sumptuary clothing fit for royal wives

Lightning thunders down the causeways of heaven

GHOST of SISTER and BILL:
Sleep well. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning

BOB:
Hush my people I’m sleeping dreaming
listening for the snowflakes impinging

the biosphere of my recollecting

How the bay’s insisting combers cut away the Kellams’
decks and kitchen windows until

they had almost nothing left and were killed
by common colds

I hear the drumming drumming