Is this.
the Shadow of Death?

This waiting?

                 This apathy?
                      
                             This expectation of misery? (quietly looking forward to it)

Crash
     and break
              and fall
Rush past me in waves,
I
will pass through this.

I am light
I cannot be affected.
I am a bodyless reflection of the sun
this flesh
is nothing,
I barely feel it,
barely live in it.

I
am barely here.

This body is temporary,
all of this aching
is temporary.

I
am transient stars.
I am the breath of things billions of years dead.

I am a ghost
finally reaching the place
they were sent to haunt.

So what does it matter?
Can the stars
answer your calling?
Can the sun grow any dimmer because you request it?
Can you pin the clouds
to the sky above your dry bones
with the might of your tongue?

Am I not all these things?
Am I not passing
fleeting
burning uncontrollably?
Tumbling through the void of space
only to be turned into folklore
when I finally snag on the surface
of this jagged planet?

I
am centuries of rain
reaching
for the ocean.

Water
running back to it's birth place,
taking this new body with it.

The water swells,
small waves roll into the beach
the ocean,
sends it's soft thundering
to where we sit amongst the driftwood
-contemplating the hazy obscurity spread before us.

The sea's gentle rumbling
is that of a slumbering beast
a deep
                slow
                        breath
in
            and then
                                           out.
waiting,
for the season to change.

Listen to the articulated movement of the tides
The clink of a thousand stone teeth
Picked up
And put back down amongst it's neighbours
Baby molars
Lost at the seaside
The debris of a hundred smiling summers

Early morning stillness;
geese
cut a line
through the illusion of sky.

There is more to this planet
than just the earth we stand on.

----

Midday chaos;
       -short reprieve in a city park,
The geese
hold a cacophonous reunion
indulging themselves
with the season's  temporary abundance.

----

Soft arrival of evening;
dusk rolls quietly outward from the moon's feet
Geese
trace lazy circles
above the field.

Their murmuring,
drifts up from the cool grass
through the windows of old houses
so as we fall asleep
in our dreams
we will remember
that we cannot separate ourselves
from the wilderness
we were born out of.

Lay my body
out across the strait.

As I roll over in restless sleep,
let me hug the breakers to my collapsing chest.
Swallow the swells,
the sound of the sea
crashing throughout the emptiness
The wind
whining through me
a briny howl
drawn out of my creaking hull.

Lay me spread eagle
across the water
dissolve me
into the harsh glitter of fractured sunlight.
Reduce me
to flotsam and jetsam on the waves
what will,
in time,
be washed back
to this beach
where I sit now
and long
to
howl.