Poetry, Nature
Purification
In the arms of the sea
“When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, and the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise, and imposes a rhythm upon everything in me that is bewildered and confused.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke
Standing into the wind, the froth of the ocean surging
around my thighs, the first drops of rain pebbling my skin,
I raise my arms in supplication to nature. Purify me.
Cleanse me of the entangled energies of grief and the cut
to the soul of the loss of innocent beliefs and of the trust
in humanity’s inherent goodness.
I balance, my feet sinking into the shifting sand and the
ever-changing ocean floor, attuned to the onslaught
of waves tossed from the belly of the storm, still raging
out at sea but now stealing in on misty breath and tidal pulses.
There is a ferocity to this that I cannot resist.
