Leaning into the Sea

On the other side of the dunes are fog and the sea,
a persistent greyness. You can hear the waves,
enough to know their turbulence,
but there is no discerning just how or where they fall.
You are left listening, leaning into the sea
hoping for enough sound to understand.

That way of knowing is not your strong suit.
You are old enough to no longer hold assumptions,
or believe what you believe. It has not served you well.
So where others might fill in the blanks
and paint their own picture based on history
and what they want to be,

you are left with the now, and what is,
or in this case, isn’t. Knowing the sea is changing the shoreline
and having no idea how.

A wiser man would wait for the sun,
for the breaking of fog,
but in these parts, the gossimer curtain can last forever,
and so you walk into it, towards the sounds
neither believing or disbelieving, only knowing
it draws you, strong as love.

About this poem

I am in a place in life where I believe what I see in the moment. Everything else is a leap of faith.

I do a lot of leaping.

Tom