MAN LOOKING INTO THE SEA



It is such a large thing, shoreline like a tense muscle,
that he cannot concentrate on this small bit here.
He knows how steadily it moves, curled and splayed
into milky flats beyond this surf, its dizzy swell
offensive. He trusts rigid things better: walls, cars, structures
that do not reach out in random longing.

No one behind him sees what is here: driftwood and water
shrugging away, a relentless much of nothing.
He knows here in the shallows
riptides scoop the shore clean, but out there
solidity gyres down into a forgotten black.

He hates the sea not because it collects but because it never suffers.
What has the ocean given up?
It eats up coastline, steals away delta silt
and only offers up those bits we don't want back:
whale bones and shells, cold remnants of living.

He knows a hand
reached out for him,
but he cannot remember what his boy was wearing.



© by Nathan S. Jones



http://www.valpo.edu/english/vpr/jonesman.html