A Need for the End of the World

It has been a little too long
since you have stood at the end of the world,
still and content as the waves fall on sand
and the tide rise and fall
and mostly, the weather does not matter.

A little too long, not enough to be crippling,
mind you, but long enough the medicine
of the sea is wearing off. The wall that protects
your spirit grows thin.

It must be marshalled, that wall.
You have lived without it
and like all things eroded,
it has not ended well.

And, even knowing a bad ending
is not the end, I have grown tired
with age and errors, lies and other people’s lenses,
and the wall protects me, the wall,
fluid as the ocean, as the tides,
misty in the morning and at times
bright with sunsets. There is power to be had
by sitting in the winter sun,
letting the heat settle in while the air is still cold.
There is power in the natural sounds around you,
void of voices, filled with hope,
with reminders, with restoration.

Yes, there is value in a wall of wind and wave,
of a nothingness at the end of the world,
large enough that you can shed your brittle old skin
and grow tender again, a place where the wall
that builds at horizon’s edge grows softer
and stronger
at the same time.

About this poem

I try to get to the seacoast a couple of times a year. It is where I become new. Where the poisons get out. And the grace gets in.

The photograph was taken at Race Point on Cape Cod.

Tom