Wind drives up from the south
against the ebbing tide,
the surface chalked with waves.
I look out from the cabin
until the hour comes
to leave for the dock.
Time for another goodbye,
constant as the rain
and about as welcome.
I seem to empty again and again
and wonder when joy will find its season.
The wind might lift me off this rock,
carry me to the ocean beyond.
I could get lost in water
and swim among whales
but for this morning
I’ll just head down
to the long wooden pier
and say the goodbye.
BRAVO! In Loving Respect…
I get it.
I know this goodbye, Don. Waiting for the boat, bowing to the ocean, wondering if this will be the last goodbye. Witness to it all.
Very poignant for my wife and I as her brother passed over this morning after we said our final goodbyes yesterday.
In the movie “Manchester by the Sea” a man loses his children and wife after a fire, but gradually returns to life in reluctantly becoming the guardian of his rebellious 16 yo nephew. He comes to feel partially joined with society when he and his nephew start rolling on the swells off Manchester in their ancient fishing boat.
As intimidating as the vastness of the great ocean might be for many, she is a womb to me, even while standing on the shore. And when I must turn my gaze and direction toward my inland home, my heart urges me to glance back with a tearful goodbye, that I cannot once again set sail to my true ocean home.
Your well of inspiration and imagination is a source of great pleasure for us Don.
Quite the melancholy offering, Don…beautiful…
Don–this is gorgeous. I like the fluctuating tone from the colloquial “constant as the rain/ and about as welcome, to the mythic “I could get lost in water and swim among whales,” and the whole effect is spot on.
Thank you for sharing this suspended moment.
Don, I love your tracking of how the mind tends to go to the possibility of danger and finality and then pulls back to the simplicity of doing the thing in the moment – which is simply to say good-bye. Important good-byes are so often bittersweet, sometimes final, and always ripe for conjecture.
And this poem has so many tinges of things unknown. Very engaging.
I loved it, and enjoyed chewing its cadence, and sadness. You will be back soon.
Sweet poem. Thanks, Don.