The Least of Things

Water washes on the sand.
An almost rhythm, no wave the same,
but almost. Similar enough to become lost
in the music. Similar enough you succumb
to the magic.

In and out. Like breath. Soft in the morning.
Despite all the science, there is nothing complicated
in the action itself, in the sound and sight.
In and out. Like breath.
Here it erodes. Here it builds up.

But slowly. Like breath. Always the next one,
easily anticipated in the pause.

You need this.
You need the simplicity.
The quiet, the certain thing, not quite regular,
slow to rise. Slow to fall. A focal point far
from yourself.

You are the least of things.
You have become comfortable with that idea.
The sea will rise without you. It will fall.
You will live and here and there people will carry momentoes,
flotsam relics of a flotsam life,

Sometimes beautiful, sometimes harsh,
never the same, tide to tide. Things people
will remember, treasure a while, and let go of.
There is no need to make noise.
It will not matter.

Like a storm, any noise I make will re-arrange the landscape
for a time, until the sea finds its rhythm again,
and all becomes smooth, almost regular.
My noise does not matter.
I am the least of things,

content to lose myself in the sound of the waves,
and the eternal blue of winter skies.