A tide cannot always be ascending. 
Sometimes it needs to decline. 

My 90-year-old father lives married to an easel, 
streaking sunbeams through cadmium blue, 

shadowing tides with burning umber. 
Glistening waves, he can’t stop 

flecking titanium white. 
When he was young he painted knot holes 

and moats for musicals he sang in. 
When the script called for a child, I strolled 

or stood on stage. I had always hoped 
for a bigger role in my father’s life. 

Once I pretended to point at bears in a cage. 
Another time I carried a king’s train. 

The best part of every show was the finale, 
when we all held hands and sang together. 

We bowed. They clapped. And the song held 
me through the night and even after. 

For days, when I closed my eyes, I could hear 
Dad’s resounding tenor. 

His favorite role was Cap’n Andy 
in Showboat, spiffy in his nautical cap. 

For years, Dad inhabited that hat, 
spoke of his ache to sail his own boat. 

He painted seascapes until he went blind, 
tuned pianos until he went deaf. 

In the white winter of age he sang 
in the church choir until that last descent 

when tides go out and white barnacles hide. 
Their cases, broken shells scattered across wet sand. 

* Publisher’s Note:

Excerpt from a quotation widely misattributed online to John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. However, the quotation is from the Prologue of Pat Conroy’s novel Beach Music (2009 Dial Press Trade Paperback Edition; Random House, Inc.), copyrighted 1995 by Pat Conroy. The full quotation reads:

“The tides surged through the marsh and each wave that hit the beach came light-struck and broad-shouldered, with all the raw power the moon could bestow” (page 12). Google Books, retrieved on 5 April 2023:
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Beach_Music/hU0SWjQo2WMC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=The+tides+surged+through+the+marsh&pg=PA13&printsec=frontcover

Pauli Dutton

is a poet in the Los Angles area whose poems have been published in ONE ART, Writing In A Woman’s Voice, Verse Virtual, The Pangolin Review, Better Than Starbucks, Altadena Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Her poem “While Teaching Line Dancing at a Senior Center” was nominated by ONE ART for Best Spiritual Literature (2022, Orison Books).

Pauli holds an MLIS degree from the University of Southern California. As a librarian she began a continuing series of poetry readings and workshops and published an annual poetry anthology. Upon retiring she taught line dancing and hosted karaoke sessions at a Senior Center. She and her husband have also been active ballroom dancers.