An Unknown Shore

I’ve washed up
On an unknown shore
Clear of the wreckage
From which I’d drifted
Alone on an empty sea

Bruised
Scarred
Burnt

But OK

I spit sand and salt
From my parched mouth

Thirst

Then

Hunger

But first
Reconnoiter 


So up now
Onto the roiling sea of dunes
With their smaller wavelets
Of grasses in the wind

From the tallest
Scan up and down the shore
Only waves of ocean and grass
And the tidal strip of sand between

No people
Or signs of habitation
Or even a trickle of water
Splitting the dunes
To join its salty objective

Inland
A barren of pines
Obscures whatever topography
Or structures
May be beyond

At the forward fringe
Where dunes meet forest

Thin
Scraggy
Scattered

Windswept trees become soon enough
A thickly boughed and wooded

Darkness

I sit for a while
In the rustle of wind and sun
Watch the gulls soar
As their caws echo
The chatter of thoughts
Playing out silently in my mind

Ideas without a tide
Or a beach to wash up on
Soaring on an unseen wind

I am adrift in a familiar peace
The pleasures of moments lived fully
On sun and sand excursions
Whether accompanied or
As preference sometimes won out
An adventure of solitude

Before long
The harsh admonishments
Of sun and wind take their toll
And while chewing my lip
In meandering thought
A chapped bit of it tears away
Leaving the taste of iron
The sting of revealed dermis

The elements have reduced my options
To an accommodation with mortality 

Move or die
Shade or die

I strike out
Into the pines
With a good deal more hope
Than the conditions call for

Confident 

That an unknown darkness
Has more to offer
Than the expanse of nothingness
I now know
Baking already
Under the intensity
Of a morning sun