some thoughts from remembering my dad

Growing up

On tippy-toe, I stretch
To touch the highest point,
Some thing….
just out of reach.

My measure might increase my power, my value.
From this new place, I could be more, I could be better
and in that way, somehow safe.

At last my fingers reach the mark and I wait.
To know the thing that has changed
in a way that is not noticed.
I t is not enough
Not enough
not enough to make a difference.


Watching the light

The light draws me out of me and in my mind,
I travel the dance of light across the waters surface.
Lying on my stomach, I can feel the warm wood.
My face pressed into the dock, I smell salt and smoke.

Though the cracks in the soft grey wooden planks of wood
melted into the softly painted light that marks the rippled surface.
to join the licks of wind lifting the water in salty wet licky licks

The sun is bright and leads me, to join the river below,
dark and cold, a solid blackened slate of liquid.
The winds pierces through the gaps in the wood,
making stripes, a horizontal pattern of cold that spreads from below.


Secrets of the Sea

Off, high,
caw, caw caw, caw of a gull, suspended
Waiting…

I wait, to learn the secrets of the sea
Whispered in a breath

time of no time, no place
not asleep, not awake,
I am above watching from below,
my reflection
from the dock
from the sky, the gull watching me.




Soft Sea

The fine white sand is hot and soft.
It burns and claims my feet, slipping and sliding
Down, down, down and down
Toward the water.

A soft crunching marks the quarter of my passage.
Reaching the top of the path in the dune line,
A sharp smack of sea air, the smell of salt, and
bright mirrored light sears my eyes.
The wind blows the tears from my face before I know what to feel.

At some distance, the sound of families, children squealing and teenage laughter spreads out on the expanse of sea , sand and sky.
A thread of sound from a radio is carried by the wind
and then is gone.

The dry sand gives way to damp and then wet,
hard as I near the water’s fickle edge.
Softer still, the mix of sand and warm water yields to my weight,
covering my feet, holding me there, cast in that place.
A wave curls and rolls to me, gentle and foamy
the sea brume
lingers in bubbled islands
carried up the beach and now abandoned .

Past the soft wet sand there is a line of cast up weed
tangles of shells and sea grass
A light mark of fine white crystal records the reach of a wave

In the shallow, a stretch of mussel shells, brokens bits of blue and silver
that bite and cut my feet.

The waves break clean. Surfers are delivered along trim lines
of aquamarine perfection.