As Published in the Scarlet Review Literary Magazine
The Ocean
There’s a roar
That comes with waves crashing.
Overwhelming—that music
Of the billow, of that
Brine filled mass
Ceaselessly clashing
With the surface.
A surface on which
Humans rest,
Humans lodge,
Humans watch
The push and pull through
Long glass windows
And listen
Through circadian cycles
While they dream.
Imagine living in it—in that crash,
Feeling the collision,
Being a small fish
Free from the enigmas of the deep, yet
By unfortunate chance,
Floating too close to land, too close
To man.
My, how it’d hurt
To be stuck
In the wavering flux
Of the sand.
But, oh, to see it!
To hear it! To be Enthralled
By it! Captured by it!
Absorbed
By how dangerously
The currents cling
To the beaches; made modest
By
The unnerving power
Of the tides.
And oh, to listen to it
Like a poem, like a song,
Like a spirit of the
Universe
Claiming back its woe
Through that roar,
Through that passion
And to be
Completely void
Of its wrath;
To be only right beyond,
Just a few feet removed
From such a
Peaceful pain;
To be safe, viewing a sunrise
On the offing
With a sister, with a lover,
With a book about romance
In hand.
Wow, how small the moon looks!
A mere skull
Of the earth,
But how big its reflection
On the waves…
There must be a reason I’m alive—
I see it,
I see it right at the horizon.
