Waves

I hasten out to the beach
Envelope in hand
Fumbling to get at its contents
I don’t even notice the surf

The wave peters out
Just before it reaches me
Its last energy spent
As bubbling foam dissipates

My muscles relax
Tension leaves my body
While the ocean recedes
Back down the beach

I turn over the paper again
Check the wording again
The test was negative

The test was negative

I’m going to live

Another wave comes
Stronger than the last
Soaking just one shoe

Which makes a delightful squish
As I stride back up to the house
Good tidings in hand

Dissipating Wave
Seaside Creek Beach
Mendocino County
Pacific Coast Highway
California, United States of America

Taken during travels, 2020

I guess I should note… this is a work of fiction written in the first person.

Fortunately, I haven’t had quite this experience… though I did once have to wait 24 hours once to learn why it seemed so urgent that I schedule a lab procedure to test for cancer. Fortunately, it wasn’t urgent, just precautionary with slim chance of discovering anything at all. In the end, there wasn’t anything.

That was an interesting 24 hours, though. So I suppose I know something about this character’s experience.

NaPoWriMo 2020
Day Seven; Poem Two
Fourteen poems total

#stayhome #washyourhands #writepoetry

7Comment

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1

livingonthebacksideoffifty on Apr 7, 2020 at 5:18 pm
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How beautiful you are at the sea…How good the test was negative, too! A fuller life to live now…test or no test! I look up and think God thoughts; I look to my side and think friend thoughts. And I’m grateful to have a chance to think them.

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- 2
  
  Patrick Jennings on Apr 7, 2020 at 5:24 pm
  Reply
  
  What a beautiful response you have written here. Thank you. ❤
  
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3

DawnSeeker / DawnHoof on Apr 7, 2020 at 7:40 pm
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Hurray!!!!! I remember when I got the “no change” verdict back from an IRS audit — I felt free as a bird :)) :)) Enjoy! Dawn

You might enjoy this: https://soulhorseride.wordpress.com/2020/04/07/where-starboy-runs/

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4

iidorun on Apr 7, 2020 at 9:27 pm
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The wetting of the one shoe is like your “toe dip” into what it might be like to receive this type of news. Wonderful word imagery to go with the visual!

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- 5
  
  Patrick Jennings on Apr 11, 2020 at 9:31 am
  Reply
  
  <grin> I hadn’t thought of it that way, at least not consciously. 😉
  
  I love it when readers of my poems find meanings in them I hadn’t noticed that words had created. In that sense, I like to say that a poem is never complete until it is read, and it becomes a different poem with every reading. Every reader becomes an author, who rewrites the poem with every reading.
  
  As I was writing it that passage unfolded like this:
  
  The poem begins with the narrator saying they don’t really even notice the surf. In a state of heightened anxiety, they’re not even in their body; all that they truly experience is the worry over what is held in their hand.
  
  I wrote the rest of the poem, sans the shoe reference at the end, but it just wasn’t quite sitting right. It needed a little something… I couldn’t quite put a name to. But having the narrator “stride” back to the house with good tidings wasn’t quite enough.
  
  Soaking the shoe came next. A little irony, perhaps? Just as things get really good, a small thing goes wrong, but … no matter.
  
  And then it struck me…
  
  After reading the lab report, in the relief and burgeoning joy, the narrator re-enters their body — sort of becomes whole again. One shoe becomes soaked by the now present ocean. But their relief and elation is so high, something which might normally have annoyed them, even the squishy feeling and sound of the soaked shoe on their stride back up to the house is delightful.
  
  When I think of it now — this didn’t come to mind at the time — it’s like at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life when George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) comes down the stairs and the big spherical finial at the bottom of the stair rail comes off in his hand, like it has annoyingly come off in his hand so many times before. This time, however, in his joy at being alive, he thanks the annoying bit of loose wood for being there and, unless I remember this wrong, even kisses it before putting it back in place.
  
  That’s not to say your interpretation is “wrong” and mine is “right”. Both of them work for me just fine. My subconscious is always trying to tell me things, and sometimes someone else has to come in and read it out for me. 😉
  
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  - 6
    
    iidorun on Apr 12, 2020 at 5:14 pm
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    Oh! I love your explanation of the thinking behind the genesis of your poem! I agree that the best poems and stories include the reader in that final bit of understanding, that soul-touching that is created by putting words together.
    
    Our subconscious can be such wonderful things! It sometimes makes us better than we thought we were. Like that angel in the movie!
    
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    - 7
      
      Patrick Jennings on Apr 12, 2020 at 6:21 pm
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      Yes! Exactly. 🙂
      
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