RETIREMENT PLANNING

“Today, many people beachcomb for beach treasures and
also because the activity offers them a natural prescription
to achieve better emotional, physical and spiritual health”.
- S. Deacon Ritterbush,
A Beachcomber's Odyssey, Vol. I: Treasures from a Collected Past

If I lived on this beach, I’d walk each day
on the shore line looking for certain kinds
of rocks, specific shells. I’d collect purple edged
clamshells, ones the Leni Lenape supposedly
used to make into belts of wampum, for money.

I’d place them into large half gallon Mason jars
and once filled to the top, a lid would seal them
like the garlic, hot peppers, pickled vegetables
at the A&S Pork Store we used to go to in Fords.
I’d display the jars in my living room on a long
thin shelf above a perfectly matched purple sofa.

In later weeks or months I would move on to find
black rocks, brown rocks, beach glass, conch shells,
whelks, scallops, oysters, and jack knife clams too.
I’d place them in their own jars, on their own shelves
like the way I remember seeing all the materials in
Edison’s Labs in West Orange when he was searching
for something too, something that would work for him.