Time and Tide

Copyright 1987, Five-Rayed Sun

Vacation isolation, living from tide to tide
The workday clocks are far behind -- forgotten
They can't calculate the world of seasons
My cove knows only the cycle of the sun.

Sky, sea, air, nearly naked
Like Buddha on the beach
As naked as an office white body dares
In the full blaze of August at noon.

I let the pressures go in the constant sea wind
Cutting loose all the baggage from another world
Sitting cross legged like original man
Watching the Canadian geese fly in low
Not thinking of how to catch them
Reveling in their perfection.

Vacation reality; the return of childlike wonder
Afraid of what creatures lurk in the seaweed
Playing monsters with dead horseshoe crabs
Building temporary castles and altars to the tide
Praising the rising waters, an unseen moon.

Swimming in saltwater firelight
As the sun dissolves behind clouds and evergreens
I am a dolphin soaking up the elements
Diving, turning, chasing crabs along the bottom
Physically alive again, no longer an employee with a task.

Above the foam, below the gull's cry
I am a burned aborigine making sand drawings
Between little fires of smoking seaweed in four directions.

Making a ritual sweep of the beach
For tidal treasures to be used
In small altars to Aphrodite and Neptune
Those Gods who subtly beckon and call
And draw us to places like this
For primal communion and renewal.