Florida – No Talent For Certainty

The Sun Sets on the Bay

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

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

… 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

Just sitting by the sea.

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

You really miss the things you didn’t realize you had.

It was a Fall day, brisk and cool
Down at the waterside
We slowly walked along the edge
Attempting to decide

How we would spend our day,
Given the limits of our town:
Two twenty-somethings, bravely bored
Just wandering around.

I can still smell the air, so clear
And see the sky, so blue:
As we ignored perfection
Planning something else to do

I took a date down to these waters
Many years ago;
To talk and watch the day go down
From light to indigo

And she was right next to me, I
Inhaled her with the air –
A scent I still remember
As though I was sitting there

And friends, among the many things
I know that I have lost;
The roads I will not find again,
The gone whose paths I’ve crossed

She sits inside me, always,
Ever beautiful, and one:
Amid palms & pavilion
At the setting of
The sun

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