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I float in the ether ... a roll of sea swells below, pier toward the
west, island I know so well - endless hours there, but rarely
alone ... then.
Moon sparkles dance at my feet, underneath "me" - soft, yellow-
blue stars of reflected lunar beams, shafts of lit night haze, break
apart on the crests ...
A thousand coruscations - rippling bulbs of opalescent flashes
that I burst with my being, and scatter on the inky surface of the
bay, brightening the warm, briny, twilight air ...
This is what I AM ... now. No dream, there I was, once, below ...
a sum of youthful motives, to laugh, cogitate, love, cry, to place
the puzzle pieces with concern and sensibility ...
Sensibility? Ha - such irony! We, broken souls searching ... three
there, once, oddly "us". A heart beat in my chest, true, for the
physical sake that I translated poorly ... loving ...
Love for the sake of love only. Is it not thus for all the callow?
The crude and burgeoning id that we twist around Life's finger?
I float in the ethereal vacuum ...
A revenant eternity is no bargain ... to feel, to love, to act, to
HURT! Many upon many, the visitations, spurned images played
out, no tactile, no breath, no seam in the fabric of this tapestry ...
No waft, no will, no wonderment! No guilt, oh the cutting pangs!
This place is not special, but oh, how special it IS! This place is
not mine, but oh, it is no one's BUT mine!
This place is just a small island in a bay, like a million others, but
you will ALWAYS find me here. I am no more, but I AM, and here ...
look for me on nights like this ...
Watch as I kick the moonbeams into pixies, listen as I make the
wooden posts creak, (that is not the tide), and breathe me in ...
oh pray, take pity and make a soft breath of me!
Feel the bite and slap of the keen, salty sea that has become
me! Draw in all that it is, and all that I have become in its stead!
Fill your lungs with it, still ...
Then give it back to the wind, yet. But gently, that, and with a
thought or two of kindness, if you can manage. I float in the
meanderings of others ...
An island there, westward, and the shine of the moon below,
now calm ... gone the swells - remains a glass-like bay of stars
and puffs, wan and few ...
In the sea now, a reflection of what I am, what I have become,
the ethereal ... I float toward the mirror image that looks back
at me from below. 'Tis there ... you will find me, always ...
amaranthine.
~ 1st Place ~ in the "Avatar" Poetry Contest, Line Gauthier, Judge & Sponsor.
Copyright © Gregory Richard Barden | Year Posted 2017
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