Wave Watching

Buoyed by Pasternak's observation of the waves, I see
with renewed vigour why 'everything wears their succession'

As I gaze from the shoreline, eye-level with the incoming roll
that swells beyond gravity before toppling into its brine.

These toilers of the moon's cycle, shimmering like silken scarves,
a platform for the passage migrant and wreck of native gull

Or the roof's two-storey quake stripped of slates,
promenades pulped, altered landscapes in their wake.

This much I have discerned between comings and goings –
a time for peace or upheaval, to brace oneself or be spurned

Like a punch-drunk boxer rising off the bloodied canvas
to remain as flotsam or jetsam's refusal to surrender.

Sometimes we are floored by what the waves bring in,
shocked and shamed by a child's body, face downward

Or a boat stuck in sand without people, no footprints
to show they made it to the promised land.

Surfers like surgeons get closer, test the voltage and stare
into the frozen eye of its being to confront a colossal power.

Will this be the one they ride all the way in to terra firma
or be tossed off like spray, unable to stay aboard?

But there is more to learn from wave-watching, not least
the verification that all you have is you, while we yearn

In the allotted time allowed us to decipher that old longing
in the bones for clarification of our place in the chaos.

Renewed by salt on skin and that ancient rap in my head,
I leave them on the strand to their shenanigan

As they spread their capes like thieves, withdraw
with all that I have gazed on and imagined.

John Liddy is a founding editor, along with Jim Burke, of The Stony Thursday Book and has published many collections of poetry and a book of stories for children. His most recent poetry collection is The Secret Heart of Things (Revival Press, 2014)