The Resting Rock

In the summer of 1996 I signed up for a poetry writing course through Just Buffalo Literary Center. I had seen an ad in the premier arts and entertainment weekly at the time, called Artvoice.

Local poet Kastle Brill hosted about eight of us on weeknights at her cottage across the Peace Bridge from Buffalo in Waverly Beach. I was the not only the youngest participant, but the only male. I enjoyed the sessions up there. The course was about eight weeks long.

We’d walk along the beach for inspiration, or after receiving writing prompts from her. Our homework was to write a poem and bring it back for group discussion the next week.

One evening, Kastle had taken us on a walk through the woods near her cottage. In the woods were overgrown paths and foundations of a by-gone amusement park. Back then, I didn’t even know the name of it, and had never known one had existed there. (I’ve since learned it was Erie Beach Park, which closed in 1930. Here’s an article about it). The secrecy”of it had struck me. From the street or the houses surrounding the ruins, one would never know anything was there.

Kastle directed us to a large tree in the center of converging paths. The tree was encircled by a stone border and a garden. Someone had been regularly planting flowers there. Kastle had come upon the flower planters one evening. They explained they planted flowers there as a reminder of what vibrant life used to occur in the overgrown woods.

Here’s a poem from one of my walks along the beach.

The gentle roll of the lake
retire its cargo.
I bend for a zebra shell
left-over on the beach. 
Striped and sandy
its job is finished.

I smell my childhood on that beach, 
Of nights we sat in restless smoke of bonfire,
of days we walked over seaweed carpet, chasing toads.

Young footprints left with the tides
but the waves of time
set new cargo on my beach.