SEA FOAM

 

Where’s anybody?

Stupid question sorry…gone somewhere. As ever.

Taken up by their own busy humdrum.

With, yes, the marvellous always lurking in between.

Everybody is taken up by something.

I, in my sea-shell present time, am taken up

by this business of being alone.

I don’t do anything particularly big or small,

being alone, I just keep living.

I’m alone in my ocean of memories like bones,

or bright ashes, listening to great songs

that are like clouds sailing anyway

or sea foam sweeping over, jingling,

swishing over the bones.

The ashes, the memories and bodies’ flashes.

Its “anyway” washed into the marrow

of this here-and-now that sways.

 

You know well this foam,

this alluring bubble relentlessly blown.

This flowering nothing.

The insubstantial fabric you are born to cherish.

Look at the white-crested waves coming,

at how thoroughly they are absorbed in the sand.

And how they keep coming.

They don’t mind if there’s nobody

who gazes and listens.