Blue Mountain Arts Poetry Contest

Christmas Gift
by Garrett Sharpe

THirty-FIFth
Contest
SECOND Place

I have a crow’s eye for things,
picking up shiny bits of world in my fingers,
delighting in them, taking them back to the nest,
filling my shelves with shells and stones.
You’ll know I love you when I reluctantly
give a piece of my collection to you,
fists unclenched just enough for you to pry it away.
But my hand unfolds completely for my mother
as I drop a seashell onto her dining room table,
a fighting conch to remind her of Georgia’s coastline
and Cumberland Island and the smell of home,
salt drifting so thick in the air you can taste it.
My mom is a fighter as well, against waves of pain,
crumbling spine, rusted joints, she takes all comers.
But sometimes she needs the sound of the sea
roaring in her ears again, to tell her that her shell
has held together in the crashing surf before
and will bear her through the next cresting wave.
But if it doesn’t, if the next one tears her spires to pieces,
dissolves her elegant whorls and patterns into chaos,
I will drop a new vessel onto her table, say,
“Take mine, Mom. Take what I can give.”

About the Author

Garrett Sharpe is an ecology graduate student studying marine microbiology at the University of North Carolina. When he is not working in the lab or on a research vessel, he can be found leading hikes across the Southeast, writing poetry, or practicing nature photography (Instagram @grett122).