in ash on the sand (last burnt poems)

coast guard

in the dark I lie back
thinking of when I first heard such
desolate presence
turning and pounding at a near - yet far - shore
changed utterly by a storm
quietly raving; crashing and
eroding time
beneath heaps of stones,
under hiding stars.

that sound - oblivious to men -
is no friend of
everything we stand for;
everything we hold dear.

besides
there was only just a TV signal,
a small open fire had warmed
our perched and smokey, stony home
and life was newly fired but now so fragile
where our family clan lay -
except for I -
listening...
timing...
the next bleak and random space between each close 
and far-off breaker.

it really is our dark earth; our troubled sea
conspiring against us;
expelling or at least
getting it all out, or... something.

under such siege
the world slept on warmly
thru that loosening, booming night...
then i too...
buried deeply in between -
and found snug rest
within oblivion...


before

a brand new day -
bound to come back beyond the dark
to herald -

brave but fresh adventures
for our needy spirits, surging
to ride out again; to seek the source
of all that restless power
beneath the near and steady horses of
our parents love.

you know
the memory of those waves -
and my fear -
all turned over; changed;
into bright wet sand; seaweed wreckage,
running - to tame a land
of windy, fresh mornings,
ransacked and renewed
for quick plunder together
as the waves worked on, distracted;
so far out -

we stole their treasures while they regrouped -
hushed; more settled now - but still...
and ever since -
I think on it -

that sound - cementing us -
in one fiercer realm; that time
ruled by timeless, unstoppable stallions
forever charging, rising,
spilling... and commanding -
from their distance in the dark -
smothered yet ever present
beyond the measured law of each and every day
since childhood...

since the music and voices grew up all around us,
pulled us
and we drowned.


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acknowledgments: ts eliot & jim morrison