Life atop Death
by Odin Roark
A fishing trawl freckled by rust
Decaying by salt air and sun
Washed aground many decades past
Still holding to life
Like listening to the breath of nature
Awaiting tomorrow’s sunrise
Where another inch into the sand
Awaits more seeds aloft form shore
Settling upon once polished reflection
Now but mulchified oak and teak
Ready to perhaps nurture a different life
How proud this floating casket
Unwilling to sink into oblivion
Mushrooms luxuriating as offered bouquets
Rising atop the growing mossy knoll
While sprouting weeds where once the captain stood
Stretch skyward in gratitude
Here
Rests the unwilling death
Where once heavy with daily catch awaiting market
Now can only listen
As the next crumbling movement
Bows oceanward
Chanting its ohm of calm
Slowly sinking
But not fallen
Shrinking
But not gone
Would that we might know such peaceful isolation
Waiting for the darkness below
To forgive the oft blinding light above
And exercise the final embrace
Categories:
oceanward, boat,
Form: Free verse
Oceanward sail the yachts and liners,
a match stick flotilla in a green whirlpool bath
seen from the dizzying height of the cliff top.
Beside the lighthouse, ghostly echoes
of crashing waves and wheeling gulls
reverberate upwards from sand and rock.
Scents of seaweed, bottle green surf,
bracing, intoxicating, sailing on the stropped edge
of a rainy needlepoint breeze.
All the while black storm heads gather
far and away on the distant horizon,
whilst here stands I, sensory overload
sparking in the fissures and cracks of my brain.
The drop to the glassy black rocks beneath
where white booming breakers smash and erode,
little by little the coastline is eaten
an inch or so each passing year.
Fixed gazing at the raging cauldron
as if answers to the unanswerable will rise to greet me,
I lean and sway in magnetic salt winds
held there in suspense...
Categories:
oceanward, nature, places, sea, green,
Form: Blank verse