Sunday, September 19, 2010

waymarker


this beach is always a special place for me to walk

my father walked it


i find it interesting
that we both have tried to decode its mysteries
to understand and share
something of its cultivated rawness

to the degree that is possible it has been tamed -
if it is possible to tame water and rock

i think you can contain their mystery
perhaps even restrain some of their larger actions for a little while

but the subtle purpose and detail of their existence
carries on without concern
for those little interventions

for that's what they are
and what they will be






12 comments:

Elisabeth said...

We are powerless to understand fully those ways of nature, the sea and how it exists, hopefully in harmony. Over time we sure can muck things up, too. Sadly. Thanks, Steven.

Claudia said...

love your poem - and i think there are mysteries that just shouldn't be decoded...

Lorenzo — Alchemist's Pillow said...

A beautiful spot and beautiful thoughts to associate with your dad and your untamed and untameable memories of him.

steven said...

elisabeth - my own sense of nature is that it adapts to the human presence in its wholeness in much the same way as a stream adapts to the movement of rocks by a child wishing to build a little dam. eventually it moves those rocks away so as to flow as it wishes. steven

steven said...

claudia - it's an impulse that i can't contain - to try and see beyond the surface of things. my own sense is that the surface of all things, all experiences, is itself a waymarker pointing to a deeper mapping. it's in the deeper mapping that the real treasure, the real beauty exists. steven

steven said...

lorenzo - it is beautiful there. strangely and perhaps moreso through my emotional associations. steven

ellen abbott said...

My father loved the beach. He bought a vacation home when I was about 13 and we spent all our holidays and summers there. Eventually, my parents moved into the house (which was not on the beach but on the bay side of the island) and my father died there. My sister and her husband eventually moved into the house and she used to see our father walking on the beach in the distance. Oh, did I say my sister sees ghosts?

steven said...

ellen - thanks for sharing this memory. i'm intrigrued by the idea of seeing ghosts. i wonder what it is that you see? i wonder why? steven

Meri said...

Ah, the seam where water and land are joined. That place is both healing and ferocious. So vast.

Linda Sue said...

That beach and the lighting makes me say "shhhh quiet, do you hear?"...a "Listening" beach.
Stoned on the stones and bright pebbles! LOVE!!!! the textures and colours and general comfort of the hard bits I find extremely soothing.

steven said...

meri i love that you see the layer i try and place between the surface presented here visually and textually, and the metaphor that leads to the real riches!!! thankyou. steven

steven said...

linda sue the beach under these lighting conditions has what i call in my own language an "edge of what you know" quality. there are little colourful pebbles and giant smooth waveworn pieces of rock. it's a good place to let go of, to unburden, to be available. steven