[Thespiritexpress] Poem The Beach

[Riantee Rand]

The Beach
                                    
is where the wild things are,
where glinting-eyed tigers sit around bonfires
listening to stories coming out of the bag,
 
the bag of the raconteur who joins our camp circle
and manifests sailboats, sirens and sea monsters
then unfurls an ocean and navigates a caravel
 
into those fanciful times 
when a hero in a barrel 
trusted himself to the wild, wild sea.
 
On her island, the hero's white Lady, 
waited patiently, 
spinning away the thread of his return,
 
spinning to the rhythm of the surf,
the cries of seabirds,  
sitting still, she spun his destiny.
 
Only fishing could relieve the Fisher King
from the aching burn 
in his damaged genitals.
 
Life wounds young males, 
scorches adolescent pride;
 
teacher's scorn shatters, 
father's sarcasm cripples.
 
The slayer of a child's trust will be thrown 
into the ocean deep, the holy book tells us,
for water washes away 
the sins of the fathers.
 
Nothing concealed or set in concrete 
on wild beaches, 
nothing defined or contained,
no manly erection.
 
And we can sink our feet 
deep in the sand, 
dredge up our lost voice
 
and plunge into the one-memory-for-all.
 
How will we ever find out if brightly capped birds
sleep with their heads tucked under their wings,
and how will we translate the song of the seal,
if we cannot reach down 
to the metaphors, 
the similes, 
if nothing can be like something else,
if we cannot stand on the border 
where we see ourselves as others?
 
How can we ever cease to be biology, 
explode the anatomy 
and flow where sand meets water, 
be other 
than the words we constantly speak 
about ourselves 
to a mirror
if wild things 
are chased away from our beaches?
 
When lions and tigers 
no longer sit at our campfire.
who will draw the Lady's island back in sight,
entice her to join the mainland?
 
How can we ever take any chance, risk a change,
if we are not allowed to sleep under the purring of the stars, 
attached, like strings to a kite, 
to their odysseys, their fantasies
as they unravel the precise anarchy 
in the dreamer's mind?  
 
And how will we know about the wild face of God
if we cannot let the leopard behind our eyes 
guide us to the very edge of the sea?
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