On the Beach: Oct. 11th, 2001

On the Beach

Oct. 11th, 2001

One month after the world ended.

The little island world we, the privileged few,

could pretend was safe, forever, and righteous.

The fallen towers, the fiery messengers

of unfathomable destruction yet to come.

Tourists walk here, barefoot on the beach.

They came here, I imagine, as I have

to remember, not to forget.

To remember a red dog and a yellow-haired child

as they enter the water, their cries of goodly shock

and honest forevers cold, blue, and always new.

A white heron stands 

balanced in perfect equanimity upon one leg.

Wave forms overlay my feet, 

transparent hieroglyphs of infinity:

    Her way of speaking

    Her manifest, unspoken words.

A brown man lies spread eagled on the cliff.

He is cast between sky and sea and land,

sand sunk, leaf-molten, blackberry thorn, the Green.

Toes, fingers, flesh reaching into the green redeeming Earth.

He is rooting himself. He is taking himself back.

    I lie down in grateful imitation,

a stranger in companionable human proximity,

sharing this rite of re-membering.

I see a girl, walking on this very beach.

Yesterday, and 30 years ago

(how did I get here from there?)

She is sourcing,

sourcing the one who lives here,

a river Goddess with no name.

She has made a mermaid offering

of sand and stick and seaweed.

I can hear her sand prayers sound here still,

   wave resonant, 

   purified by fire and time,

   memory rooted, 

   sky seeded, they ring true still,

   here, in Gaia.