~NATHAN S. JONES~

MAN LOOKING INTO THE SEA

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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