The Ocean

Goodbye again. Say there is a little song in my head

and because of it I can't sleep or change my mind
about the future. Now the song runs all the way down

to the beach where I sit as if the sky

were my room now. No one, not even you,
can hear me singing. Not even me.

As if the music rose from the mouth of the ocean.

No mouth. Like rain before it reaches us.
Like wind twirling dresses on the clothesline.

Who has no one has the history of the ocean.

Lord, give me two more days. So that
the last moments may be with someone.


by Jason Shinder

Radar

No one exactly knows

Exactly how clouds look in the sky

Or the shape of the mountains below them

Or the direction in which fish swim.

No one exactly knows.

The eye is jealous of whatever moves

And the heart

Is too far buried in the sand

To tell.

They are going on a journey

Those deep blue creatures

Passing us as if they were sunshine

Look

Those fins, those closed eyes

Admiring each last drop of the ocean.

I crawled into bed with sorrow that night

Couldn’t touch his fingers. See the splash

Of the water

The noisy movement of cloud

The push of the humpbacked mountains

Deep at the sand’s edge.

by Jack Spicer