ODE

You:
you who carried
wonder in your hands
down the long, lonely walk
to that plaintive beach
and, tossing it to the sea,
used your fingernail
as a small scalpel
to lance the skin of the earth
only to bury a bit of yourself
beneath the sun-soaked sand of discovery --

you are the fringe of land
that meets the sea,
unshakable in the fleeting pledge of morning,
immovable in your magnitude
like a weighty rock
dropped from the height of a curious child.

Yet we -- we! -- do not sink, sadly.
Instead, we rise slowly, slowly, slowly --
now that the newness has drifted downward --
out of the tides of twilight,
out of the sea and into the air,
into the atmosphere
where the moon (if her appetite is adequate)
shall gobble us up
and swallow us whole.

 

 

Copyright © 2015 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

Unless otherwise indicated, all materials on these pages are copyrighted by the author. All rights reserved. No part of these pages, either text or image may be used for any purpose other than personal use. Therefore, reproduction, modification, storage in a retrieval system or retransmission, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise, for reasons other than personal use, is strictly prohibited without prior written permission.

www.johngrimmett.com