Ripples and Tracks, Dreams and Memories

Lakes and beaches are wiped clean like a whiteboard, each day by waves, tide, wind. Then marks of ripples and tracks provide transient tell-tales of what has gone on since, of what is yet to come. What caused those ripples? Where did they come from? What caused those tracks marking crisscross paths on the sand? From whence did they come? To where are these interlopers going? The agents and causes know nothing of these things. They do not care. They can't know they are being tracked. They do not wipe their foot or finger prints clean. They wander furtively wary, scarily and carefully looking about, but unaware. They dare not look back, lest they be cast into salt or stone, or sent back to hell, for defacing such clean pristine spaces with their street-art hieroglyph graffiti. A hushed stillness lies over the lake at dawn A single plop or tremble stirs a ripple the mirrored plane. Soft as a whispered caress on a sleeping cheek, Perhaps the kiss of wind, barely daring to touch. Perhaps it's the kiss of fish rising to take a fly. Perhaps an insect flitting, skittling onto the surface Or a bird dipping to drink from beak. The ripple propagates outwards in concentric rings, echoing and resonating on its journey, long after the cause has passed and gone. Where are these ripples of unknown causes going and why, The sources are untraceable via back-tracking, remaining hidden and mysterious, long since gone. Do these ripples want to cuddle a distant shore, to caress a foot paddling in the shallows, to rock a boat with sleepers to sleep, or to kiss the pebbles puckered up to kiss in rows? Or to simply go and then fade gently and dissolve from view, happy in their journey getting there. In time the wind and water gathers breath, to blur the lines, to wipe the scroll and slate clean, To blow the sand grains around to cover the tracks. The tide comes in, obliterating the imprints. The wind builds waves to crush the ripples in chaos. The defaced becomes a pure clean mirror surface unmarked again, With no trace of regret, or memory to replay. The defacers, shakers and movers, long forgotten, forlorn and forgiven, have faded away, to dreams and memories, forgotten, hidden, wiped away, until awaken.