Turnstone
Tumbled by the tide, over and over
Washed by rolling waves
Polished by the shifting sand
Dried out by the winter sun
That shiny pebble in your hand

Let us go nightswimming
And weave myths out of memories

Let the stars shine over
The corals of your heart

With bioluminescent algae
Glowing around your body

As if a glow in the dark crucifix
Beatific as the moment of death

Smell the salty air
Neptune's drunken breath

And dance by the beach
With the partygoers drunk

In their mythmaking
Ecstatic like a monk

Weave the night, yes weave
Our breaths into a myth

Into Odysseus sailing the Aegean
Into the miraculous with the Galilean

A blurred midnight blue landscape
Opens to you with a gleaming pebble
Of gilt and affection.
     As sapphire waves beat the brazen boats
                Bedded on shores of a thousand stains,
                     Encircled by nautical carapaces of a time unseen,
             Prior to the reign of oceanic potentates and
       The submarine souls which now tread
   Haphazardly, thirsting for an iota of freedom amidst
A home long since ravaged.

Though, memory resides of a time before then,
As the undersea flaunted its life unsullied.
The folly of man an ironic query
To which desolation retorted
In the voice of Another.

Heavy hands toss
and tear as the veil of
peace is torn

Dense punches leap out of the sea
and meet with the sharp strikes of the winter air

The ocean and the wind

Two childish men bickering
with bloodied hands
brawling to caress the soft
curves of the sultry sand

there are few of us at the beach
some look at the sky and seem happy
others keep evanescent things under their arm
such as the turtle they caught at dawn
but as it gets dark
we become so sad
not even light can get to us
not even the photographer
who keeps ciphering out in a notebook
and moving us around
to make room for
Death in the picture

No words can share the chaotic precision
Of waves sweeping a sandy shore

Clean of its filth, expired life, footprints
Leaving the ground beneath supple and bare

Find me the words to describe
The confidence of a feisty crest

As it approaches the shore so swiftly
To pound without relent

How the pinnacles raise
A turbulent impasse

Until another frothy height
Follows its thin soapy tier

And stacks its might like ***** keys
Carrying them both to shore

Tell me the poem that captures
The layers and ripples dashing

As countless and intermingled
As the buttery layers of a croissant

I wish I could find the words to hold
This image deep within me

To remember the blur of green and blue
When I am far from their ruling roars

I would enshrine their vivacity
With a razor in my heart

If I could keep their beauty
A keepsake of nature’s art

When the outside world is yelling
I wish I could recall

At will the rumble of undertow
The thunder of admonished land

The crashing sounds that kidnap you
Forcing reality far behind

For no mortal trouble is so large
To ground you by the sea

The only thing to consume a wave
Is the crest rising in its wake