Stephen Sondheim's MacDowell Medal

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Stephen Sondheim gets his MacDowell Medal from Michael Chabon and Frank Rich. August 11, 2013. At least two thousand people in attendance on a perfect blue day.

Sea Lavender

Gathering Sea-Lavender

                                    

Gathering sea-lavender

in salt marshes south of Brunswick

we ease ourselves into contours

so gentle they don't show on maps.

Only the washboard effect

of successive waves of lavender

reveals a dainty presence.

Sea-lavender sells for five

dollars a spray in Boston,

but we're harvesting just enough

to warm us one dreary winter,

a candelabra as nostalgic

as my mother's genealogy.

                  

Last night when the wind banged the doors

in our rented cottage and the tide

swept our neighbor's dory from the beach,

we felt each other quicken in sleep

as we both dreamt of gathering

sea-lavender in brilliant light.

I also dreamt, quite separately,

that a former lover came home

to sort through my possessions

and take away what pleased her,

especially sentimental

items like the shard of slate

from the Deerfield Massacre stone,

             

the purple ribbon from Robert

Lowell's grave, the small glass cat

that was my first gift from my wife.

No wonder when morning came

I proposed we scout the marshes

for sea-lavender, despite the rain,

our bodies still uneasy

upon us, the briny damp

revealing as X-rays or radar,

the losses of our previous lives

reflected by the stony fog

and empowered by the radiance

ignited by our love of the sea.