From a position of power
Only makes me feel
Smaller
The will to live
Or the will to not die
Courage or fear
(I’m unsure which)
Drives them to the beach
Lungs filling with salt water
Muscles spent
Energy exhausted
I dance along the roly poly
Climb and dive and swerve and wiggle
Ocean by my side
Land rising and falling beneath my tires
I am reminded
Of the day’s catches and false-starts
The day which would have never left my bed
But for a promise to a friend
Captured by their beauty
Mindful of their warning
Poet’s words
For simple colours
Writ large
On an epic landscape
I hear the roil of white noise
Waves crashing through the broken rock
Source obscured and muffled by darkened boughs
Clinging thickly to rising land
I realize
The beauty that is the world
The perfection that it is to live
Even without clarity
Certainty or conviction
There was the great sea of hope
Dashing upon the rocks
Settling in little pools
Where intrepid molecules linked
Carbon to carbon
With oxygen and hydrogen