Now: Presence/Absence

To be: a receptive surface

accepting, (as gift, not property),

the sand that yields to my foot

and the fugitive mist

that lingers behind and looms before.

I wanted to stop and see myself

as if in a cloud.

But where I am, it is not.

We move in time,

a dance of impress and erasure.

The air is still but

a winter chop

curls and crashes

ashore.

Maybe it’s windy in Sandusky.

The air is clarifying

but too warm for February?

I will not follow

the arc of the land all the way

to the vanishing point.

The waves beat time for my footfalls

until I stop, lingering,

limpid eyes

looking off shore.

The lake: grey slate spackled with occasional sun dazzle,

a cool exhalation

against my unshaven cheek.

Long ago I heard a man, an old country doctor,

say on the CBC

that people want to live forever

but are bored to death on Sunday afternoons.

And Faust: he wanted a moment he could live forever.

But a moment that could be lived forever

would not be a moment,

nor such stasis,

living.

Nature/Culture

The land slides away:

from shore weeds to pebbles to mucky sand

tickled by the foaming water.

Broken zebra mussels and

the last of the Great Lakes clams;

beer cans plastic bottle caps

stones with pleasing shapes

and a rusty old nail, a rampike

in a 2×8 that has washed in from somewhere;

a weathered chestnut shell and ground down brick,

fishing tackle and work gloves,

bird bones fish bones fossilized ferns and an old dead carp;

charcoal briquettes and beach glass,

the footprints of solitary walkers

and an empty bottle of of “Pink Whitney” flavoured gin

smuggled in

by teenage girls from Leamington

for a secret summer party.

It is getting cooler.

I turn and retrace my steps.

Near an old log,

fit for sitting

someone has lost a pen:

a love letter that will not be written.