Chocolates Full of Seawater: April 2012

Life is a Box of Chocolates Full of Seawater

I'm looking through colored

sea glass, edges smooth from rough

seas and time

a long life

of rising and falling foamy waves

wears on you, beautiful

It’s a symphony –

you’ve heard it before –

rising and swelling, brash

brass crescendo

falling and slowing

like taking a deep breath

after screaming

a deep, flowing, aching

brilliant

movement like water

is always water

in the lakes and mountain streams

in the oceans and deep seas

in the air, breathable and hovering

in the icy floes of the north

and the rain pours

sometimes

on the rich and the poor

it makes no difference –

water is water

It’s a great hall made of pink

marble, with high arching ceilings

and enduring columns –

There are stories on the walls

paintings in plaster

tiles of ceramics and glass

extensively detailed, they

progress through time

in a line

which moves chronologically

but is not straight

up and down

rise and fall with the sun

It’s a swing set

set into motion

caught as a carefree child –

you ride it ‘til you’re old

like a train without stations –

it just goes until it doesn’t –

as long as you keep pumping your legs

back and forth

up and down

It’s like the ebb and flow

of the tide

rising and falling with the sun –

The waves wash in

stealing away cigarette butts

and half-empty cans half-full of saltwater beer

leaving stars to dry in the sun

and bits of colored sea glass