[Newspoetry] Lost At Sea Literature

[Donald L Emerick]

Lost At Sea Literature:
War Heavies but Lighten Casualties

That last time she breathed
And then died, I was there,
standing near the side of her bed,
watching her chest rise and fall,
less and less, a wave collapsing,
upon itself, rolls flattened, ashore.

The tides stopped flowing.

Those who live by the deeps
and darkness of bodies of water,
the restless oceans, lakes, and ponds,
say this happens twice each day.

The tide sweeps in and out,
melting sand castles, and
leaves its own assorted littering,
random bits of theses and thats.
Flotsam and jetsam, I am thinking,
scatter across the stretching beach,
as mute witnesses who accuse no one,
but only sprawl before our eyes, concealing
partial testimonies to untold many events.
These random congealings here and now,
disclose the weathered face of uneven time,
as casual contingency united; only bricologia
recollects how the frothy trash of yesterday
falls on us, surfing the echo-stuff, today.

She died, just about then,
so it once seemed to me,
then, when my thoughts were out to sea,
somewhere else than on the lonely shore.
And I heard again gulls and wind crying,
the hollow buoys still ringing out warning,
And thought it odd that she was gone,
melted and crumbled away into sand,
and then I thought my thought was stiff,
to have nothing but images like these left,
when some say you feel sorrow and grief.

My shrink says I should not worry,
recollected detachment is normal,
under such circumstances as these,
as watching moments another's death,
which is ultimated thulian detachment,
especially when that one death occurs
on placid seas of contented tranquility.

When death is unexpected,
When no time is enough time to prepare
for storms billowing up and blowing in,
then violence happens
when time forbids escape,
and holds you unready hostage,
unwilling witness, reluctant victim.

I am still drowning sorrow and grief,
in recollected detachments, one for another --
for I thought I saw her worn hand struggle up
above those heaving waves, to grasp mine
as floating rings from some life jacket,
before it sank to lie as lifeless litter.
Etched in the sands were signs
of her last struggle on the beach,
against salt-wet winding sheets,
flowing away, no longer assail.

I later thought, of this shrink speech,
"Could shrink believe a lie like that?
Could she think death is non-violent?"
This death did not happen, not to her;
it was not her attachment severed, lost.
So, she spoke of my reported detachment,
calmly, as if each life were but a clinical trial,
an experiment whose results were recorded,
a saved part of a larger collection of data,
whose truth was not in isolated cases,
but in a general case, the one overall.

But, even ironic splash of irenic thoughts
fail to lighten sea war's heavy casualties
by throwing some designated bodies,
lightly, tossing them out overboard heaves.
Nothing shifted; it lurks in murky sleeps
ever out in the deep and dark waters
washing against desert islands,
by litter, belittling sandy shores.

Thanks for listening,
Donald L Emerick
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/archive/newspoetry/attachments/20020426/34976594/attachment.html