Beaches

Barefoot in lands far from my home,

Earth touches Earth in those realms unknown.

Heaven’s waves whisper against my ears

Lost anamnesis from some distant years

Nauseating and repulsive, a terminus of loam

Reminding me of direction, wherever I roam.

The weary bottoms of my feet are torn by the sand

And sea goddess hair courses through my hand;

As I walk eternally toward some distant land,

My final destination, a place unplanned.

Those innumerable grains falling gracefully to the ground,

Unnamed souls lost without a single sound;

Crawling through my fingers in an effort to escape,

The imperfections in my hands, they tirelessly take shape;

I will myself to hold onto every rough grain

The endeavor to confine them I squander in vain;

For though their presence in my wounds bring me pain,

Those multitudinous, sharp grains I cannot retain.

Those longing winds exhaled from the mouth of the sea,

Speaking languages not known by most, yet familiar to me,

Yet no seaside town, no docks, no lighthouse, no quay

Pass below, beside, or behind me on my journey:

For all that remains in me are those lands of distant reaches,

Those unquieted oceans, and their oppositely voiceless beaches,

With their vast expanses of desert sand,

Not telling the distance to sea or land,

With darkness falling upon my blue ocean bay,

and memories returning of what was taken away;

The seductive sunset falls in a slow burn span,

Slipping from heaven like small crystals through my hand,

And waves rushing across the earth, loosing memories strand by strand

Never ceasing to remind me of all of my lost grains of sand

A Scattered Seed

I am not the dirt beneath your shoes

Nor the sun in your sky

No more strength I have to lose

As you finally pass by

Do not come here trying to plant your seed

For I promise you will not grow.

Your bad habits I will not feed

Since I’ve found the strength to tell you no.

You will not claim my ground

Nor kill my growing crop

For you are no longer around

And now the taking can stop.

You cultivated me in shallow soul

In the nighttime, never to see day.

But then my fruit began to spoil,

And my foliage began to decay.

To you, I remained unfailingly loyal,

Even as I withered away,

And even though I began to toil,

Still, you willed me to stay.

Close together as we bore fruits,

My devout trust you did acquire.

Sucking the life from my roots,

Turning my stable ground to quagmire.

With my water, you grew taller

Your foliage overshadowing me below;

Causing me to become ever smaller

As my branches ceased to grow.

Finally, I want you to know;

I have one thing to tell you, I must:

For you I do not grow,

And I won’t sit on your shelf, collecting dust