Divorced from the restless gray ocean
a pinprick of reflected light
drifts lazily from beyond the horizon,
carried closer by dripping fists
which jealously beat the beach with listless ire.
Barely distinguishable it jerks and leaps,
every crest a triumphant crescendo from where it shall plummet again.
A bottle, twisting and darting, becoming obvious and bringing with it
the hope you hold in spite of inconvenient truth.
A gleaming glass urn hurled out in requiem of what was,
distance and time adding undue merit to the tattered lies within,
pleading for just one spark to ignite again the melted candle of regret.
The letter wet and torn, the language incomprehensible,
you have lost yourself in the place where no shadows are cast;
here only what is can be.

What good was it to cast your message out in a bottle,
to use the sea as a soap box
leaving your words to wind and current?
Why not build a raft?
Paddle out beyond the places you have seen
only to be trapped again by sand and circumstance
once the ocean evaporates into a humid breeze.

There you will find a man
who lives beyond the water and the islands in between.
A great sage born a millennium after anyone would care,
burdened forever by the weight of things he can never unlearn,
can never explain or relate, only endure.
His mind is an unstoppable freight train.
His mouth a black, iron smoke stack
belching words which hang in the air
like gray clouds of putrid pollution stretching out behind him
as he pushes further on through some desolate desert.
Just as the train has no recognition
of the tyrant tracks which confine its existence,
the rocks and snakes have no compassion for sand and sun,
no desire to listen to the wind
speaking urgently with another man’s voice
all the terrifyingly liberating things
they so desperately need to hear.

01/22/2008

Posted on 01/22/2008
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