No one goes to the beach anymore.

Through the casuarinas the waves look a long trek
the lovers when from the city take a break
can only hold hands on the sands
wistfully eyeing the sea a mile away
then kissing and making up the day
riding to where the winds take them
spinning yarns along the thickly saline haze
of what could be and will be
downing the present in the crystal pool
placid as the lost yearnings in their hearts.

Waiting for the storm
to lower its head and charge

In ozone incense of unstable air
Eons of ions ago
horned and heavy negatives
lock prey within vortical-eye
Angelic flutter of electrons struggling on--
in yellowish friction above...

“...Did I tell you?”

Love is lightning hotter than the sun!

Schism--

resolving in the only way it can
a design that cannot save itself!

Clouds roar away--
For a minute-- I think that I will too
-- along with all these words and rain

*“...and did I tell you...

how thunderstorms remind me
...of love...the way it should be

and the worship after?”

"Write one sentence, the truest sentence that you know."-Hemingway

So I took his advice.

I wrote it on the walls of your slumber and
along the spines of my favorite days.
I painted it on windows,
we turned into doors,
and doors we turned into walls.
I wrote it on your sharp tongue
and all it's favorite places to explore,
the latitudes
and longitudes of a truth unraveled.

I will always love you.

i think about
a lot of things
and most of them
don't stay for long
but if i had to
sum it up,
for you,
i think i'd try.

i think about my memories
and replay laughs
and lessons, kisses
and the first time seeing
people who i now know well.

i think about the near future
and try to tame expectations
and try to focus on the now
but sometimes it
gets tough.

i often feel like
dipping in and
out of life like
something rolling
back and forth
along the wave break
resting now and then.

but mostly i just
think of that
which is before me
like a map or
flower or a shadow
or whatever form i find.

so when you asked me
what i think
it at first seemed
a riddle, for
i'm not sure
that i think at all
now that i
think
about it.

Searching my heart for its true sorrow,
  This is the thing I find to be:
That I am weary of words and people,
  Sick of the city, wanting the sea;

Wanting the sticky, salty sweetness
  Of the strong wind and shattered spray;
Wanting the loud sound and the soft sound
  Of the big surf that breaks all day.

Always before about my dooryard,
  Marking the reach of the winter sea,
Rooted in sand and dragging drift-wood,
  Straggled the purple wild sweet-pea;

Always I climbed the wave at morning,
  Shook the sand from my shoes at night,
That now am caught beneath great buildings,
  Stricken with noise, confused with light.

If I could hear the green piles groaning
  Under the windy wooden piers,
See once again the bobbing barrels,
  And the black sticks that fence the weirs,

If I could see the weedy mussels
  Crusting the wrecked and rotting hulls,
Hear once again the hungry crying
  Overhead, of the wheeling gulls,

Feel once again the shanty straining
  Under the turning of the tide,
Fear once again the rising freshet,
  Dread the bell in the fog outside,—

I should be happy,—that was happy
  All day long on the coast of Maine!
I have a need to hold and handle
  Shells and anchors and ships again!

I should be happy, that am happy
  Never at all since I came here.
I am too long away from water.
  I have a need of water near.

I have long since forgotten his name
(He was only around for my sophomore year at Dear Old State)
As he was universally known as  “Coal Miner”,
Being of all things, a geology major,
The nickname being buttressed by one heroic drunk
In whose aftermath  he brought forth, all Vesuvius-like,
A dark concoction of dirt, twigs, and some small bits of stone,
Though by and large he was reasonably diligent in his classwork ,
Maintaining his drinking and general decorum
Within sensible boundaries
Not adhered to by the general run of dwellers
In our brick bungalow of doubles and triples.

One perhaps-it’s-truly-Spring day just before finals week,
The Miner went off in an in aberrant and inexplicable rampage,
Replete with wall punching, blood letting,
And annihilation of light fixtures
Which spilled out of the dorm, across the academic commons,
And ended just inches from the Dean of Students himself.
It was the last any of us saw of The Coal Miner
Before he and his disappearance rode off together
As the stuff of undergraduate legend.
We later heard The Miner’s mother had died
Suddenly, unaccountably, down in Cortland,
Succumbing to some rare and misdiagnosed malady
(To be fair, it was one of those illnesses
Beyond the experience or worldview of small-town hospitalists)
And, with her, all his means of support, emotional and otherwise
Vanished like so much ash blown away
From the site of some ghastly fire.
To disprove the theory that God only sends us what we can stand,
The college regretted to inform him
That they were unable to provide
For the unfortunate contingency at hand,
And as such, his only mildly distinguished academic career
Was brought to an abrupt and unfortunate end.

We later heard he’d told one of the coterie of security officers
Who had wrestled him to the ground
(Thus preventing the Dean’s untimely
Though likely unlamented end)
That one of the faded, clumsy portraits
Depciting long-dead medical directors
Lining the entranceway corridor of that hospital back home
Had actually hissed to him
What do you want from us?  We’re only men, after all.
(He’d been in the full-blown midst
Of his shock and grief at the time,
So the possibility of hallucination certainly couldn’t be discounted)
And one of his hall-mates swore upon his mother’s life
He’d seen the shoulders of the founder’s statue
(Heroic bronze figure outside of Waddington Hall
Smiling benevolently,palms upturned, hands outstretched
Offering a bounty of knowledge to all comers)
Actually began to droop a little bit after it had been passed
By a screaming, bloodied, raging Coal Miner,
Though that tale was the handiwork of Tommy Mulligan,
Who was sodden and given to pure foolishness
Remarkable even by our standards,
And I later heard the Coal Miner
Was living in a barely habitable cabin
Up on the shore of Saranac Lake
Where he had become a stonemason
Specializing in the restoration of headstones
Buffeted by epochs of mountain sleet
And Midwest-borne acid rains.