
Whitney Hudak
We Have Our Difficulties
We walk the beach in the mornings
after each storm to see what’s shifted,
what’s new, newly gone. Belly-up
horseshoe crabs—their spurred legs
clawing the sky for ground
that isn’t there—ancient panic.
Some days love is a choice.
Sometimes it chooses you
and you find your life is now
spent accumulating trash
with treasure. Always meaning
to sort it out later.
Devil’s purse husks, water-colored
jingles, lobsters’ legs torn
from their bodies, swirled driftwood,
never-ending shells. The surf-line
of weeds where seagulls scavenge
and squabble. Sandpipers
dancing the tide.
The ocean calm now as we stand
in the consequences of its sleepless
night. When the waves bullied
the shore and the sand said
Yes, yes, yes. That’s what I’m here for.
To meet you wherever you are.
However you roll in.

Whitney Hudak is a CNM and poet living in Newport, RI. She has work appearing or forthcoming in Hunger Mountain, Catamaran, Chautauqua Literary Journal, One Art, and The Idaho Review among others, and has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and a DNP from Columbia University.
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