We’re going through the left behinds
Box upon box
Taking turns from oldest child to youngest

First one takes a colorful candle holder
The next one a framed picture of our family
We agree to make copies of the photo
The African carving is chosen, something
I had given her years ago
I pick a necklace I have never seen her wear

All these left behinds

When we come to the books, the two middle children
Leaf slowly through pages, reading aloud random passages
Did she ever read this to us? my brother asks
No, I answer, thinking
This choosing is going to take a very long time

There is a fifteen year spread in our ages
He is searching for the mother six years before he was born
But I can’t give him my memories
Even the years he and I shared
We remember with a different slant

The youngest child, the one we all recall being born
is more silent
She got our mother’s spent years
The worn-out ones

We come to the many baskets of shells she combed
From the beaches of Sanibel, the Algarve, Bimini
And Greet Turtle Cay
She most admired ancient, broken ones
Rolled by the sea for years.

I fear if we go through these shells
One by one, as she did
We will be here for days
Suddenly it becomes clear
We’ll return them to the ocean, but to different shores
Half the shells we’ll take to Provincetown
The beach we still call home
The rest we’ll take to Hull
Where she lived her later years.

Neither shore is native to these fancy mollusk artifacts
From the Bahamas or the Keys
New England beaches claim the modest clam,
scallop and quahog
It is a good laugh we share
imagining the beachcombers
Excited by their confusing finds

All these left behinds