We didn’t realize it until we were returning from our Miracle Beach foray that dogs are not allowed down to the water’s edge. Some signs are meant to be obeyed, some you just gotta wonder about, and do what you think is right.
My impressions coalesced into a poem…
Miracle Beach - rites of passage
We broke a few rules, trudging the arced shore
beyond the subtle sign, deleting dogs of any sort.
Sophie’s nose came with us, snuffling things out,
we might otherwise have missed, being merely human.
Death, of course, is ever present,
a sickly sweet scent on salted air,
a peeling back, layer by fibrous layer, of muscle and bone,
the tendons and ribs that hold us in,
bind us to joys, hopes and sorrows
like the taught stings of a harp.
Impressions criss-crossed our wondering ways,
sometimes the past tenses of others, or our own,
at all times intriguing, the comings and goings, heres and theres
of life in the making, out on the substrate sand.
Where it dawns on us, that all’s touch after all,
the tingle of light in our eyes, the rush of the sea,
its thrashing echoed in inner ears,
the tongue’s excitement at what once was…
it's all touch, vibrant on the boundaries of who and what we’ve become.
A convergence, really…
at the point of being…
if there is one?
I look to where my sky touches the ocean,
land curves beyond my horizon,
sound reveals its silence…
and discover it’s all part of me, particles of who I am
in this exact, eternal instant.
As for meaning? We’re ever on the lookout,
gathering what we can from the clatter and clutter
of worlds that engulf our common senses,
defy purpose… and leave me asking:
What remains of all this, once I am gone?
To which I must answer: Everything but me.
CraigSpenceWriter.ca