Barefoot - the walk up the beach alone
Is a journey alongside passionate waves
Like walking on anchored cotton
Each step anxiously craving the next sandy touch.
Oceans of water join in the experience
Retreating around my feet.
My long shadow follows me like a kitten
In the orange day glow of the evening light.
In my mind I recreate passionate times
While tickled feet squish into the unarmored sand.
Each thought complete in its own uniqueness.
A delicacy of emotions racing in with the tide.
The hopes that were held most dearest,
The fears that kept most things inside.
Am I dreaming or awake?
It’s hard to say –
The lullabies of the waves are my friends
Gently singing, returning me to the shore.
The walk now becoming long
The sun is beginning to close its eyes –
The kitten is no longer there.
Without even a shadow, I
Have never felt so alone.
What were once clearly discernible objects
Now become something jutting out of the earth.
Slowly they begin to glow with the new moonlight.
I continue the walk.
What is ahead? What is behind?
Either way it is just another step away.
Some of the objects must be buildings –
What lover’s secrets are being told inside?
The wind beginning to blow it shrills by me
Over the sand, past the objects to the sky
Onward to the stars above.
I wonder – can the wind carry away my loneliness?
Somehow it stays with me
Locked away deep inside.
Looking toward the ocean for answers
Shedding my clothing I oppose into the tide.
The cold liquid awakening me from my numbness.
Surrounding me like as if a billion tears.
Submerged to my chest – a dance begins.
The earth at my feet
The wind in my hair
The water all around
And the sky above with
This fire - kindled by all of the elements -
It burns deep inside of me.
And for one brief, settling, moment
We – the elements - with the tide
Are one again….
Once we understand that we - like everything else - are nothing more than a human conflagration of the elements that make up all physicality - that knowledge engages us to understand every aspect of the uniqueness of those elements in our own makeup. This poem is an exploration of that inner thought and the the truth that such an awareness evokes.
