Waves
Not one
But hundreds
Slapping you
Telling you the same story
Again and again
As if you could never learn
In one lifetime
Your feet cut
With sharp shells
Your knees landing on the rocks
Your face in a blur of water
And a skein of seaweed

Ice Regions

Into the ice mountains
A frigid piercing chill
That turns the skin blue
And stifles the breath
Deep ice regions with
White towering peaks
Sharp and cold like glass
That defy the grip of a hand
The placement of a foot
No climbing but falling
Whirling, plummeting,
Frozen into rigidity
Stiff bones wrenched and broken
A kind of rigor mortis
While you languish forever
Locked in a cavernous cell of ice

Seafoam green tinged with brown
From sand swirled
Up from the seabed
Low wavelets thudding
Up and over you
The thick brine
Littered with plastic bags,
Wrappers, a used condom,
A bloody bandage,
Spit and snot
Churning in the relentless engine
Of the sea
As a gull flies
Over the face of the water.

Night Fishing

The boat rocks in the black waves
Your rod cast into deep water
Where the river fish swims
With jagged teeth
And an empty stomach.
Your bait wriggles on its hook
And you wait, again and again,
For the weighty tug.

Prayer is a bird with outstretched wings
Flying to God against the currents.
It soars with light feathers
From the heavy earth
To nest in realms of eternal sun.