A Walk On The Beach I went again today ... to
that place, the allurement overwhelming ... the one we called "ours" so tritely,
"Mine" before you, "mine" again now, (tho' others have doubtless staked claimed - ages before and since).
I went there to "forget" you ... to put life in perspective again -
To feel the awe of all creation and my insignificance amidst it ... yours ... ours.
Just one of the endless ways I forget you each day.
My essence is there ... an open-air cathedral for the melancholy,
(And I one of it's honored caretakers and most stolid gargoyles, cold as granite).
The redolent brine ... laughing gulls ... clang of a buoy ... hypnotic wave wash,
Like it's lulling the day to slumber, or heartening me to listen ...
Listen to the rhythmic music of nature's capricious breath.
I walked to the end, where the ledges meet the sand, (the way
we always did),
A bit of a hike, more than three miles down and back, I think,
But it seems as near as ever when I'm so enthralled with what my senses drown me in.
It's always there, (waiting for me, I like to think) ... "Our" rock ... hours spent there ...
Talking deep, talking nothing ... kissing, arguing, ruminating, dreaming, being silent, being loud ...
(Minds at one moment as if one, the next, eons apart ... our own worlds).
That rock, though molded and shaped by centuries of water and wind,
Fit us perfectly ... as if all those years of endless pounding of surf and gale,
Was a premonition for our special moments ... was a monotonous preparation,
For romantic fools like me who find fate inescapable ... who find happenstance hard to accept,
And who believe that this rock was placed here for
our purposes alone ... (foolish).
Imagine the stories that rock has absorbed ... not just mine, but endless others,
Who have found that place as special and receptive for love and melancholy as we.
I wonder, when others are there alone, if
they do as I do -
I talk out loud to no one - out into the ether - sometimes from the deepest part of my being,
Things I would or could never speak to another human ... but that spot ...
It coaxes them out ... the salt air and sounds of the shore, reach their fingers into my being,
And grasp things there I didn't know existed ... and I'm obliged to turn them to sound,
To give substance of voice to validate their importance ...
Not importance to me or my loves or any human or nature or even God ...
But importance to the
moment ... to existence and it's divine principles.
(These are the precise things this place stirs within me each time I'm here ... but always mixed with
you).
There have been times ... times when I went in winter, during stormy weather ...
I love the ocean then the most ... it's personality is at it's most basic ... it's most visceral:
It's strength, it's anger, it's exuberance, it's joy, it's indifference to humanity,
Is at it's most obvious ... and my significance to myself is never more potent.
There are usually no people there then, and it's as if it's been placed there for me alone to appreciate.
At those times, when there are no others, and the surf is pounding ... the waves raging against sand and stone,
And the gulls are fighting the winds off-shore, the bell-buoys arguing with the swells, and the fog-horns warning ...
I walk to the end ... to
our rock, and I stand up on it, and without thinking of anything but you,
And your eyes, the way they betrayed your soul the first time they met mine,
Your hands, the way God made the spaces between your fingers fit mine so perfectly ...
Your smile, that makes those "light up a room" cliches seem so inadequate,
That incredible tiny electrical vibration I felt when I touched your skin, (like no other),
And your voice, that never stopped making my heart flip whenever you'd speak my name,
Your sigh, a music so sweet and forbidden ... a melody for me alone, that held me prisoner ...
Thinking on all that defines what you are and were and meant, (and the void left behind) ...
I reach down into my soul, to that place that terrifies me, where I'd never go at any other time,
(The place I refuse to see when I look into the mirror each day ... the place I will
always deny),
I saturate myself with that dark place and all that it holds ... all that it hides,
And with all my might I tear it from my gut in a single yell ... a sound as primal as my surroundings.
Not a scream of terror, but one of release ... a release of contrition and self-awareness ...
A purging of pain and joy and fear and passion ... loss and love and anger and insignificance ...
Hatred and jealousy ... exuberance and relief ... the longing to feel, and the desire to never feel again ...
All my emotion - negative, positive, ambiguous - the multitude of things I feel that are beyond expression...
I scrape them from my being with all the force I can ... completely, without regret or wonder,
Face skyward, I return them to the places they belong ... carried to nothingness on the ocean winds, (like the dust I someday will become).
No one can hear ... no
thing can hear ... even to
me the sound is swallowed by the surf.
The gulls and sandpipers go about their business, (I could be another of these rocks,
And it would matter not to them) ... my loud proclamations to the sky unrecognized.
But to me this little ritual is priceless, this place as precious as any ...
My soul renewed as my breath is spent, (at least temporarily), my mind as clear as the cloudless sky.
My thoughts are still of you ... us ... there ... magical ... sun dancing as a million jewels on the waves.
Or moonlight hypnotizing us to dream and believe and feel sure it would never end ...
Moments so precious ... so bathed in romance that they were eternal ... captured in time,
Beyond the sobering brush of reality ... and at those moments, all that mattered ...
No thought or feeling or emotion or thing that wasn't
US ... alone but not alone.
I go back to a time, (one of many), when we were there, caught in the rain and salt mist ...
Little droplets would form on your eyelashes like diamonds, as if giving value to those eyes beneath them,
(That sometimes frightened me with their ability to see straight into my soul).
One of those times in the rain, when the water soaked my hair and ran down my face,
I looked straight at you and cried, but you couldn't tell ... tears lost in the rain and ocean mist.
Something deep in my being, from that place I never acknowledge, whispered to me ...
And I
knew, as surely as I've ever known
anything, that this day would come ...
That someday in my future I would be here alone, remembering and mourning what we had and lost,
I looked as deep into you as I could, so when this day came I might still feel you here with me ...
Despite the longing and emptiness and pain of the reality of having you gone.
My face was soaked with tears, but you never knew ... looking straight into you I cried,
But you couldn't tell ... from the core of my being the sadness flowed from my eyes, taking with it my passion for you,
And burning my heart with the inescapable truth that this day would come ...
That despite all the wishes and hopes and talk and doubtless plans of forever,
Despite the reality of you there in my arms, kissing you in the rain, drinking in your warmth ...
Despite the strength of all I was and could be, fighting to deny it could ever happen,
Still in my deepest being I
knew ... I knew without question it was only temporary .... only a
moment ...
Why or how I could know this was beyond my understanding, but it was inescapable ...
And now that day was here, that day I struggled so hard to deny, and worked so hard to avoid.
It had come to me at last, as I knew it would
that day, and I hated myself for being right.
There was a time when we decided to be apart for a while, though I can't recall the reasoning.
I think we were both just searching then, and testing the boundaries of our love.
We used an argument over something silly as the catalyst, but we both knew better ...
We both knew it was something more ... something larger and necessary and
real.
I remember we would both come here, to "our" place ... "our" rock, but at
different times.
I remember how I would walk faster on the way here, anticipating ...
Because, (knowing I would go there each day), you would take a stick and scratch messages in the sand for me ...
Simple messages like "I miss you" and "I love you" and "Some day" and "You're my beacon" ...
Brief corny treasures that filled my heart, and kept me warm with hope and purpose and reason.
And I would erase them and write my own to you, (longer poems, that you collected in a notebook).
Now, when I come here for this silly ritual of mine, (one that the gulls seem to laugh at),
After I've purged my soul with this primal scream to the heavens, and I've moistened this rock with empty tears,
I sit and take in the beauty, and I try hard to appreciate my life and what I'm blessed with, (though that seems a lie),
And I pray and hope and wish like a child, that maybe, just
maybe, if I open my foolish heart to the possibility,
When I turn around and look at the flat sand behind "our" rock, that there will be a message scratched in the sand ...
A message meant only for
me ... a message of hope and purpose and reason ...
Or maybe just a message to tell me I was on your mind ...
That you still think of me with love and kindness and fond reflection ...
But the sand is always smooth and untouched and a cold reminder of reality.
So I find a stick and scratch ... and then leave our place behind ...
And a little more of you with it.
- Bahku, November 1, 2010
Topic: A Walk On The Beach (Original Poem) (Read 3465 times)