Sharon Dolin
Mitzvah at Gordon Beach
Down the ramp
to the sun-sequined sea,
I was musing over the time
I was seven and living on Kings
Highway and practicing handball against
the neighbor’s brick wall when I looked down
and found seven dollars lying
on the ground and climbed the steps to ask
the woman if she had lost the money
went home a few doors down
for my father to scold me:
Of course she’ll say it’s hers!
For days I lived—part-fearing someone would
knock on our door
part-knowing I had entered an open-sesame
of good luck: whispering
se-ven dol-lars into the air into my father’s ear
into my mother’s my sister’s ear
a chant for chance: se-ven dol-lars
till my sister and I went to buy Mouse Trap
and a teal vinyl dressing-case for my Tressy doll
(Her hair grows!) back then
I only wanted dolls that were miraculous—
could speak or record my voice or grow their hair.
So what triggered me to think of this memory
teal-tinged more than fifty years later
at Gordon Beach where I paid
for chaise longue and umbrella
after buying my coffee and approaching
the sea? I remembered I had forgotten my coffee
went back and glanced down at the stone
walkway where a zippered cotton pouch lay
and I knew it was for me
to discover and retrieve—
that I was brought into
this moment through memory
and forgetting
so that I already knew (without unzipping it)
this portable beach wallet—
like the one I was carrying—
contained a wad of cash—cards—ID.
Having no local phone
I stopped an Israeli couple
(after knocking on the window
of an empty police car)
asked them to return the wallet
as soon as possible—
all of us were heading into the Sabbath—
I knew I could trust them
that I was sharing the mitzvah
of returning lost objects
to their owner.
Then I dove into the teal sea
where the sun made helixes
and sine curves on the surface
for me to swim through.
Sharon Dolin reads “Mitzvah at Gordon Beach”
Sharon Dolin is the author of six poetry collections, most recently Manual for Living (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016). Her translation from Catalan of Gemma Gorga’s Book of Minutes appeared in the Field Translation Series (Oberlin College Press, 2019) and her prose memoir, Hitchcock Blonde, was just published (Terra Nova Press, 2020). She lives in New York City where she is Associate Editor of Barrow Street Press and Director of Writing About Art in Barcelona.