Between heartbeats
and the bursting
of tiny, tide-washed
bubbles, lurching
drifts of seafoam
cling to black stones,
whilst screaming, “No!”
into the roar and glower
of ol’ Atlantic’s storm.
I see her
…achey, rumbling,
‘ever-ancient
and hoary.
Upon the shores, I,
her barefooted supplicant,
squint my watery eyes
and wish for my wanting.
May the skin of my soles
begin cracking, splitting,
so that this oaken thing,
deeply rooted inside of me,
can reach for its ending.
Black stones, cracked
by eternal shuddering…
they are worshippers
from an older world,
and bear the marks
of self-flagellation.
Rapturous sea-salt lashings,
these scars-as-fissures trap
treasures, driftwood, and trash.
Sometimes, even roots
can crawl into the cold,
dark cracks,
and bunch,
like a greedy diver’s clutching
fist-of-a-hundred silver penningar,
stuck in the narrow opening
of a sunken galleon’s
rusted iron chest.
I will be dead
when my roots set,
but my soul
is safely
anchored
here, where my trunk twists,
and my branches bend to breaking
‘neath the absent-minded anger
of merciless, tidal ragings,
I will not be pulled under.
Instead, eager in the front pew,
I see Her sermon thrashing,
as a wise, slumbering witness
to the wonder and the wake.
She reminds me every day,
“Driftwood worships the Sea,
but poor ship-wood it makes.”
©️ CG Tenpenny, 2023.
I was watching a true crime show set in west Cork, Ireland. The footage of the cold and angry sea left an impression.