An Ocean Memory (Poetry by Bob Racine)

Ancient she roars

mutable mother colossus of islands

and coral reefs and prodigious continents.

Ancient she moans

somewhere off beneath the moon.

And all we hear by night is her

fitfulness on the shore,

outside our window. 

    

Never resting as we do, she awaits our

promenade at dawn,

feisty with her salt in our faces.

It was not always so.

Once we were young and

the roar was all we heard. 

In her breakers we scoured off our fears,

her crescendos no match for our yelp

of savage infancy. 

                  

We encamped for her power, a roll with

the waves of her delirium.

                  

She played havoc with our wits and senses,

her finger of foam roistering about our feet,

the blast of her breath upon our

sweating limbs,

a plunge into the stark naked terror

of our imaginations. 

Under her spell we gaped at the sun and the clouds,

took our feeble measure of the stars

that sprawled over her at night

like icons of a heaven too far from our reach,

and dared to ask whereof we came to be and

why our dreams always begin and end

on some far flung shore of the mind.

  

Only in her presence

did we dare think of immortality.

Now, she pounds with a distant drumbeat. 

At her chaos we now blink, though stirred

even yet, day and night,

by her passive resistance

to eternal sleep.

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.