I am a small boat
adrift on a vast sea,
waves still as a
heart between beats.
Fish doze in their wet beds
as pelican shadows swoop
through their dreams.
Through fog, a fog horn,
bored blasting warnings,
is glad the wind is rising.
The wind increases,
blows against me, a frail sail,
thrust toward the horizon,
the ocean lost in sky.
Someone has been walking on the water.
Footprints lead far away from shore.
Curious, I step across the gunnel,
and trek the fluid sea.
2006
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Poems often show up seemingly out of nowhere as images and insist on
being written down. This occurred in the fall of 2006 when these word
images appeared. I wrote them down and have been looking at them off
and on for thirteen years trying to discover what they mean. Recently I
uncovered/discovered a meaning.
This poem creates a feeling tone of the maturing process from infancy to
adolescence. In the first stage of life we experience life as body; comfort
or discomfort, hungry or satisfied. We may sense a shadow of danger even
though we do not know the shadow’s name. At this stage life is lived in a
fog of unknowing. Parental fog horns become unnecessary. The wind that
blew away the fog propels our untested selves out into the strangeness of
the world. There we encounter mystery. We see footprints on the surface
of the water leading away from the familiar. Someone has ventured out
beyond the familiar. At this point we gain a larger self than body identity.
We stand out of the body-self and with our more mature egos choose
exploration and risk in an ever shifting world.