Body of Water
There are so many things to love
About this husk of mine, the place
I inhabit and pump and breathe, Love,
And feel, pleasure, even Pain —
But I am at Odds with it,
Always, always, pinching and probing
And assessing and tucking,
A new kind of Pain in a sea of
Rejection in watering eyes
Swelling with the tidal forces
Of a Pool heavy with Too Much.
My efforts resemble the child’s
Colorful plastic shovel in a tide pool,
Lifting water out as wave after wave
Laps at her Feet and erodes all the sand’s
Fortifications and changing domes.
I stand at the shore and I scream with all of the force
Of a human gale, feeling my abject desire so keenly
That I am certain the Ocean Waves carry my heart
Into the Place that churns seawater into surf and froth —
But the wind carries my desperation and disperses it
Into cloud; the sea Mist joins my tears and subsumes
The salt and ache; the gulls mock my cries with their own mincing scream;
And the waves, they come, they pound and beat
Relentlessly at my immovable rock
That’s sinking into Earth’s darkest depths.
~J.A. Carter-Winward
from: This is Not a Song but I Am Singing: poetry — Coming Soon
