Saturday, August 6, 2022

Gusts from the Beach

There's a wind down
Lochlea, Drymen, Lomond,
Palm trunks like clubs that beat for war,
Even the genteel magnolia
     clicks like dominoes.

"You must go faster!"
The rush seems to suggest,
As the sky blows seaward
Through veering gulls and
       seaweed dreads.

The clouds are so precise, too still,
The power towers stiff as stone
As the flags take off with feathered wings,
"WELCOME," "Pet Friendly",
      transcend the human

And hang upon a golden thread
Between the real and material,
Promising a higher plane,
A more rarified curriculum 
      in rippling fonts and colors

Harkening to the shore
Where the one and only wind
Says the same thing it always does,
"Your belief in me takes me
       to your feet."

Viking wives weave pillage shrouds
For days like these, the call
Of piracy, to scrap every lanyard,
Abscond with every safe, replace
        all thinking with chaos

For the lust of blood experience,
The taste of burnt flesh,
Like a doughboy's ditch
Where fierce adversaries trade
        stale bread for pennies.

The palms wave goodbye to us
As we go to this, its prompting,
And the information registers
In frond calibrations 
        of measure and weight.

So much of what happens
Never happens at all, or if it does,
The seagull doesn't shriek of it.
It is different for each, the confines
        of reality are that fleeting.