My Dwelling by the Sea

I came to live by the sea;
by strange force
(her logic broke me like waves;
constantly).

Days in the misty surf---
bright figures
in a mirage.

Like a deaf man I could hear
no other song
'cept for the roaring hiss and clatter.

Like a newborn to echo simple words she muttered.

I crawled into her circle dance
until I gasped for breath;
and submitted to her for a season.
Over and over she rolled me
in her aquafingers:
clutch and counter-clutch,
the rolling logic
of her ever-crashing surf.

Lure and luring,
my dwelling by the sea;
a fire in the night,
strange beasts prowl in the distance!

She calls me outward
with the voice of 1000 mothers
and leaves me stranded
in the tidal embrace
of the lunar wasteland.

Pale evening.
And rosy questions
about the impending navy-blue gloom.

Ruddy infants
tossed fromt heir mothers’ breasts
to the turtle-scraping retreat
from the hungry, bubbly surf.

The rattle and roll of her logic.
and the ever-crashing seasnap
called me home
to my dwelling by the sea.

Fathers dwell
in the deep forest green beyond
the shower of her salty mist;
their chariots
have all been abandoned
and their shoestraps rusted-over.

Their enterprises are dust
in the childrens’ eyes
like morning crumbs:
fine, useless distractions.

Cities are beyond reach,
highways collapse.
She sends a tremor
down the coastal spine,
the earth quakes,
and she is death.

I came to dwell with her but for a season;
and so I came to live by the sea
by strange force,
She sends my days down the surf
like an echo in a conch
down to this day.