Where It Will - Aug 19 2026

 

Where It Will

Aug 19 2026

I was body-slammed

hit blindside

 by tons of water

that flung my frail body

like a ragdoll in a maelstrom.

Left me flat on my back

with brine washing over me

as it drained from the rocky beach,

catching my breath

in the brief deceptive calm

before the next wave rolled in.

An ocean

gathering strength for thousands of miles,

and an inhospitable beach

on the the edge of a continent

  — an immovable object

where a wall of water stops cold.

White-flecked surf

boiled off the steely waves

from the top of smoothly arching curves.

There was the squawk of gulls

smell of the sea

bone-chilling cold,

an acrid drip of brine

slipping through my lips

and tickling my nose.

A few hours

at a rocky beach

on a hot summer day.

Where wave after wave

kept pounding the shore,

as if the earth

had a beating heart

with saltwater in its veins.

Just as steadily.

Just as they have

for countless millennia.

Just as the small furry mammals we once were

might have heard the same hypnotic surf

smelled the same salty spray.

If awe comes from feeling small

in the face of something timeless

and too vast to comprehend

then this must be it;

swept off my feet

on a bed of rounded pebbles

waiting for the next inexorable wave

to take me where it will.

Frankly, I dislike ocean swimming:  the smell, the waves, the saltiness. And who knows what you’ll find washed up by the tide! Give me a freshwater lake any day. So why this image came to me — a rocky N. Atlantic beach on the coast of Maine — I have no idea, especially since the last time I swam in the ocean was maybe 20 years ago. And that was in the Caribbean!

The theme, though, is predictably me:  the indifference of nature, the smallness of man, and my own insignificance. 

But big ideas are probably just an excuse to write in a way that captures feeling and describes an experience: a self-indulgent exercise in scene setting and evocative sentences. But since I doubt that descriptive poetry in and of itself can hold a reader or reward her investment in sticking with it, I hope I can offer something more impressionable than pretty pictures and a little story.