Lost Ocean
 

The sun spreads golden music over grey,

Eddying, chopping ripples and small seas.

Cold, sleeping waters’ changing melodies

And hills’ high, waking shadows farewell day.

Who that has heard the sounding ocean’s long,

Interwoven and intermingled song

Could harm another soul

Knowingly, while the tides and currents roll?

But all are drowning in a puzzlement

Of empty arguments and vain debate.

And some believe that murder, rape and hate

Are marks of glory and enlightenment.

Witness the mobs haranguing through the streets.

Others, forgiving, choose quiet retreats

Where days arrive and sing,

Or in hospitals help the suffering.

The beach contracts and fades. Shall I pretend,

With Bertrand Russell once, that nothing more

Than feelings makes me welcome or deplore

Murder or a self-sacrificing friend?

There could be no reason, test or insight

Whether your feelings or my own were right

If this account were true.

The waves find rougher, fresher depths of blue,

Mounted by whitecaps rising in moonlight,

Dancing and disappearing, shy as thought.

These are the truths experience has taught,

How warm words can redeem the savage night,

And how lost ocean gathers secret flame

And man-made plagues put their founders to shame.

Nightfall touches high trees

With soft black air and quiet sanctities.

Now undiscovered lives pursue the wracked

And harried gardens, rocks and sandy caves

And shaking fields under the sharp, torn waves.

Love is the quintessential, growing fact.

We that look out from the vehement shores

Depend each on another. Neither wars

Nor plagues can break the light,

Or end the harried soul’s uncertain flight.

Headlights send brief beams toward the sky,

Then fall away. What can I know? I find

There is an imperative to be kind,

And others are immediate as I,

Before the drifting, swirling, damaged sea.

If I should speak to you, or you to me,

Truth is a shared hope found

While dark, beleaguered floods and deep storms pound.