I have yet to find
the permanency that I seek.
My abode is a sand floater
with the depth of all my past years
beneath.
Yet others use me as their life boat
I, who am volatile, transient,
am grasped at,
clung onto.
These people become my mooring ropes
and I become rock
while the sand washes my keel
and defies all laws
by keeping me afloat.
Who for?
My needs- their fulfilment
their needs- my entrapment?
Do I drift because I let go of the rock,
my needs fulfilled by the clasping
of the drowning?
Was I shown how to let go
so long ago
that my memory only knows now
the tidal forces,
the absolute skies,
the awe inspiring curved horizon
that rock dwellers rarely comprehend.
I magnify my insecurities
each fear transcends its ill-formed start
its by-way grows,
becomes a city alleyway
where the darkest encounter
is the least imagining.
no one swims towards a life raft
of less than like minds if others are there
to save.
A self-important creator
of an over-small sand land.
The single crew man
of some flotsam
dressed as ship.
Am I the one who drowns
and seeks any hand
to help me relieve the suffocating sand
that fills my lungs?
My life, more than half gone,
My raft, a careless tie-up of drifting themes,
My sail, tattered dream-scenes,
The wind, my endless vocalised convictions.
I do not seem capable of growth,
my craft sinks easily
and sand asphyxiates so hungrily.
Movement?
‘First-steps-away-from-mother’ steps
except that mother is not the rock-
no hand held there for support,
no brace, no structure to rely upon.
Those first moves become
my walk towards my death.
No gentle easing.
none of the relaxed gentleness
that rock dwellers
pass to their offspring.
My first footfall was from the jetty
onto my life alone.
Now I behold the far horizon,
surge close to havens hold.
My next footfall?
From known craft and all its confines
onto terra firma
which, till now,
has only ever been a transient waystation
on my sand-supported flow
across the sees of life.
Or am I crossing
from my floating world to anothers’?
Am I being offered
permanent let
on more than just the rock bound shores?
Can I settle my lifelong collection
of odds and sods
and gain my land legs
after this length of time adrift?
Do I let my sand-land sink
with all the bottled fears
and poisons
that made me feel empathic
to those who clutched
for all those years?
Will I lose my ability
to really help
if I’m so far
from the mid-sea spills
of other peoples lives?
Vanity is still on board with me.
Have I really been so useful?
I have been
a whiting in a stormy world.
My mind has thought me creator of galaxies,
truths have been mine to find anew,
social structures mine to build.
In my head.
On my sand-float.
On my raft.
Now I am offered
the role of ant on grassy plain.
Atom in the nail of the horseshoe.
Part of a created whole
entrenched in mountain hardness.
Granite land.
The tools I have are ethereal.
What use could I be
to those who do not know the sea?
I have gained the callused, rope torn hands-
what use will these be on the land?
All I really know
is how to save
the very few who come by wave
towards my space.
Are the lost and lonely souls
who tred the rocky mountain roads
going to need a man who rowed
against the tide
just to prove he was alive?
Will I find the rockland filled
with countless healers
who have seen and sung
and flown and swam?
How inexperienced
will my life be
when I move to earth
from sea?
How imagined is my grasp
of the landed healing art?
The conceivable change
to novice fool
is a bottled fear
that must not, will not,
rule my stride.
I must take this step
but when I do
I will become a child again.
Or
find the man.
The real,
not imagined,
me.