To live a life in perspective
I’m told you need to define a horizon
line eye level to the viewer.

From my hill of years the view is fluid
as in watery, but also as in unpredictable.

On the sea’s face a wall of fog moves in
and out like histories remembered
and forgotten.

Sometimes silver striates the sea
with such a glitter of insight
I am bedazzled and cannot look.

Sometimes fogbank and ocean merge
with such blue-gray unity it seems
the horizon rises so that I stand on
the shore, dwarfed by a surf of knowledge
that pounds at my ignorance.

Sometimes the sea becomes invisible,
the white air a questioning emptiness,
a finger-touch of damp against the cheek.