The Blue Car

Last month's hurricane ripped down dunes, re- scalloped the shore, snatched away a car. Now there's a smooth spread of waves again where sandpipers scoot across wet sand, their enigma of glyph tracks washed away with the hush of each wave, and what the ocean's taken away it now gives back: excavations of a sneaker, two candles, a torn vest. But of the relics of human lives, a blue car in the sea gloom gathers to itself its own pale light rocking with sea-time, medallioned with shells, parked miles below on the ocean's floor, and under the layered centuries, among the midden, who will seek to know the story --poetry's anthropology-- of the lost emerald ring under the front seat, the ebony dope pipe, vial of cognac, the half-rusted key to someone's door?