With gentle insistence
The ocean rises up to greet me
And I, pant legs rolled to my calves
Welcome it’s cool, frothy embrace
Enjoy the caress of water over my ankles
The sensation of sinking into the sand
As the receding wave draws the beach
From beneath my feet
I stay there for an hour or so
Take a few steps back
When the waves threaten my trousers
A few steps forward
When they fail to reach me
My sandpiper dance
In time with the surf song
And its choir of gulls
On a cool, calm morning
Overcast, serene
The river and the people
Flow out to the shore
There to be lost
In their own way
To the surf and the sea
Slate grey sky
Slate green sea
Ancient conifers
Snuggle up to the rocky shore
Recalling, perhaps
Distant ancestors
From a primordial ocean
Even I can imagine
With my scant sixty years
From this perch over Boiler Bay
In between
The dead
And the not dead
In between
What is
And what is not
In between
The light
And the not light
There find
The realm
Of possibility
Seen only
By those who conceive
A world without absolutes
Where dreamers dream
Between sleeping
And waking
While the world flows
Between being
And non-being
In the wakening hours we dance
Between self-remembering
And self-forgetting
This is the ebb and flood
Between the conscious
And the unconscious
Like the darkness
And the light
In eternal conflict
Only the master sees
The dominance of either
Is true darkness
While the light burns brightest
In those who come to know
The balance of both
A seductive rock
On ocean’s edge
Half the day
Surrounded by the tide
Attracting thousands
Nature’s iconic monument
To a monumental coastline
In time with the waves’ ungentle caress
They saunter near, then scramble back
This flightless flock of sandpipers
Photographs and selfies
Arm-in-arm and hand-in-hand
A deep breath in, a longer one out
The calm that comes on any shore
Where the surf rumbles and sighs
Some may say it’s the rock
But the rock is a draw as any other draw
A pier, a lighthouse, beach chairs and gazebos
It is the sea which helps us remember ourselves
He’d always start the day
In the ocean
With a board
And the waves
The water was always cold
Often too the air
Grey skies the norm
The sea like slate
But every wave
Was a band of colour
In a rainbow
That became his day
Kyle heads out
To recheck the lashings
I like that about him
He never leaves anything to chance
Always stupid checks his own work
That, and he always buys the first round
But feel the beckoning
Which stirs my being
As if ’twas yesterday
Ancestral tribes departed her for land
The surf
The gulls
The sand
The wind
The sky
The emptiness of a beyond
Reaching further
Than the distant horizon
But there is no such sea here
So when I want the sea
I draw a slow, very deep
Breath in
Close my eyes
And release
Slowly
The breath
And my presence
Here
Now
Release my presence
Begin to breathe deeply
I listen for the waves
And hear them
In time with my breath
I listen for the gulls
And hear them
My thoughts glide away on their wing
I scrunch my toes in the sand beneath my feet
And feel it between them
Grounded, solid as the Earth
I open my chest to the wind
And it washes over my body
Filling my lungs, my being with life
I raise myself up to the sky
And bask in the warm sunlight
It feeds the light within
I am transported there
To the shore of the sea
I release
All that is not this moment
Let it take wing
Like the gulls
Watch this flock of attachments
Fly beyond the distant horizon
Then disappear behind it
I sit here
With the sea
With the emptiness
In the emptiness
There are only the waves
Which are my breath
Pix to Words 