By the Sea

By the Sea

I wandered like a jackal by the sea,
Searching for my dinner, endlessly,
While finding morsels here and there to munch,
With feces, dry, enough for jackal's lunch.

I wandered, slowly, by the sounding sea,
And knew that little time remained to be.
And from that sea, these phrases soft I heard,
“The body leaves, but there remains the word.”

I wandered lonely, by the wind-swept sea,
With thoughts of us and them and you and me,
And wandered how, from sea of floating turds,
There still might rise, perhaps, immortal words.

And so I sat to scribble down some verse,
Not knowing what was bad and what was worse,
But trusting that, perhaps, from mangled line,
A future jackal might make dinner fine.

And so I looked upon the rolling sea –
And drifting there, I saw, were you and me
And those departed, drifting in that sea,
With wind-swept waves that murmured endlessly.

And then I knew, while sitting on that bench,
Beside the sea, that from the sordid stench
Of sewage, there can rise, with passing time,
The trees, the grass and this – my waving rhyme.

I wandered then, beside that roiling deep,
And knowing I had nothing left to keep,
I was content to let my verses go
And homewards turn, with footsteps measured, slow.

2013 June 16th, Sun.
Brooklyn