Trying to Understand Is Worth It
If memory was made of glass,
And I could see right through,
Perhaps I’d see it clearly: how
It’s always been with you
Perhaps then I could understand
What led you to each choice:
The demons on your shoulder, and
Your broken inner voice
But such has not been mine, as yet –
Clear-sighted memory –
And so I search these waters for
Some bit
Of clarity
A morning friend by me
Just sitting by the sea;
I do not know where all she’s been,
As she does not know me
As lives are circumspect,
And fortunes sometimes wreck’d,
We find here on this sandy wet
Our brief lives intersect
My morning friend and I
Just watch the waves go by:
Before the day that I must trudge
And she, in turn,
Must fly
the morning shyly moves away
in waves of mist and cream;
and i move damp with spray and sand
into a walking dream
the dimly cast horizon sits
beyond the veil of sight;
where time stands loosely, hands by sides,
and day melds into night
your breath i hear, your touch i feel,
as light as feathered gauze;
the scent of ocean waves and kelp,
as hope – with its own laws
and so the mists of morningside
surround and pierce through me;
the walking dream of one who’s still
at one with
destiny
The kind of trouble that she was
I’d never known in all my days;
But found in new and countless ways
That trouble is as trouble does
Entrancing in her loveliness,
And seemingly so soft and sweet:
I found her virtue truly fleet,
For she, at heart, was pitiless
Our troubles take a certain shape.
I sought, from her, a higher ground:
But when I breathed her in, I found
A trouble I could not
Escape
The sun sets on the bay in peace
Away from where the waters roil;
The gulf is awesome, frightening,
But here, the watcher hides away from toil
I find a pattern in these words:
Tetrameter, that gives its way
At last, to one pentameter –
That final heartbeat of descending day
… The people on the beach out there …
The pattern of the waves and wind
The people on the beach out there
The choices I cannot rescind
And all the memories I’ve yet to share…
The life that I have now is good
But scarcely free from care and grief
I’d lighten your load if I could
We’re here to do that – such is my belief…
I feel her fingers on my hair
As lightly they express her love
Why do I always search out there
When what I have is all that I’d dreamed of?
I grew up with this.
I grew up with this for a view
But I was not enchanted;
To me, it just was what there was
I took it all for granted
I don’t think I was spoiled rich
But I do have a hunch
My appetite for views was poor
Since I was out
To lunch
