Small seacoast towns off the beaten path
Have ways of getting through the winters
Far from the rush of city life;
We call them Magnolia Manners.

Magnolia's the end of the road,
Where the land and ocean meet;
Not just another anchorage
Magnolia's where the ocean stops.

Here's where old sea captains stopped
Between voyages to the foreign shores,
Where captains wives watched for sails,
And the captains planned new voyages.

But the sea captains are gone now,
Gone like the captain's wives;
The old mansions are falling down,
And the memories of the sea are fading.

Here and there upon the coast
Lie the bones of forgotten ships
Some of wood, some of steel
Both decomposing back to sand

Magnolia's the kind of town
Where people return each summer
Old friends looking each other up,
Seeing who's around and who's not

You never ask where they came from,
Who they're with, or where they’re going
Everyone in Magnolia is camping out,
Waiting for something else to happen.

Magnolia's the end of the road
Where the road turns back upon itself
And becomes the starting point,
On  the long road back to the City

The turning point for sand and sea,
A summer town closed for the season,
Where the only people hanging out,
Are the ones who couldn't leave.

Maybe that's what all the fuss is about,
Old friends looking each other up,
Seeing whose around, and whose not,
In an endless recirculation of lives.            

I came to Magnolia at 42, my middle passage,
Like some old sea captain come back to life
Seeking the frayed threads of forgotten ways
Wondering where everyone else has gone to.

I've seen people drown at sea
Clinging to each other
Who could have lived apart
But clinging together drowned instead.

The cemeteries around Magnolia
Are filled with granite markers
For men who were lost at sea
And the women who waited for them

And I wonder, as I walk the town,
In the cold night winds of winter
As a storm blusters in from the sea,
Why the women stayed, why the men left.