Promise to be safe and ponder with you heart
Breathe deeply and fill your eyes
Be clarity in the sands
Venture with your mind into the white caps.
An old remembrance of a boat,
adorned with palm fronds and dusted with fine white sand
Resting like a native islander,
who froze in mid-sleep while catching his breath
Curls of sun-bleached blue paint barely clings to the hull.
The gunwales pitted by caked sea salt and crumbling barnacles
And in the foreground, the dead keel lying in state
held up by two saw horses,
On top, a bucket of shellac lying on its side,
its contents spilled and dried
with a crusty brush glued to the lip – unable to roll
Nothing moves in the sea breeze,
except a few ribbons of shredded gray canvas
Caught on the ragged edges of sprung planks and tips of rusting nails.
The somnolent moan of the tide harmonizes
with the fine rustling grass skirt of palm in the breeze just over the berm.
The deposited waves rush back to the sea
tumbling shell fragments, sea glass and paint chips –
like tiny maracas.
The thick mingling smells of palm husks, sea grass, and salt
condense in the matted locks of her hair –
which waltzes impersonally with the ripped canvas –
flapping like the torn tips of an unwilling pirates pantaloons.
Even as every wave lifts and hoists a piece of the weathered wood out to sea,
the sand laden, slumbering mass reminds her
of bright white sails catching the wind,
and the glistening blue bow
cutting through the water with a hiss
the lively vessels wake reflecting a burning orange sun
melting on a curved blue horizon
Free to be on its own on the endless ocean –
beginning only on this beach.
Ironically, unable to renew itself,
This sage of a sail boat is a modern statement
to a pair of displaced romantics,
For now, parted by the ocean.
Unable to lose each other along the way,
Their love, is like this boat.
