My grandpa had a handful
of beauties that he'd found
and placed between the chimney stones
at Phaleron his summer home

That was the house I loved
more than any as a child
with swordfish swords perched
in the kitchen rafters
and shiny turban shells

Rose bushes beside the door
and my grandma's zinnias
and a watermelon patch
in the garden out in front

In back the patio
its lattice draped with pink
and blue and white petunias
and steps that led out to the bluff

where grandpa's flagpole stood
mornings he'd raise the flag
and we'd salute and then at dusk
he'd lower it again and fold it
and place it carefully inside its box

The house looked over the lagoon
some half a mile across
another mile away the drawbridge
then the harbor and the Sound

For me the arrowheads were magical
tokens of another world
a life I gladly would have chosen
if there had been a choice

After grandpa died
my parents sold the house
without a word to anyone
we children felt cheated by that loss

I suspect it was my mother
her feelings never quite resolved
and then there was her father's
remarriage late in life

In my dream the house was lifted
by the rising ocean tide
carried beyond the harbor
floating off and out of sight

I like to think after the house sold
the arrowheads made their way back
to the trail the Wampanoag
had once followed along the bluff

In my mind I see them lying
half buried in the sand
beside the path where as a boy
I ran barefoot all summer long