Friday, May 20, 2011

Window seat


The salty air, the cool sweat;
This world passes by, at sixty miles an hour.
Too fast for many, too slow for some…

…A sea, it looks like,
one made of leaves and thorns;
And hidden boughs and roots,
entwined serpentine; barely even seen.

Calm, but violent waves risen high,
dotted across the landscape.
Not intending to return to the depths,
standing, perhaps, for all eternity.

The retreating sea,
the muck it leaves, reeking under the sun;
Filth for many; treasures for some.

The sea retreats, winds advance.
Specks of blue and red on tattered papers-
kites with broken strings;
Lost, now claimed by the winds.

The tides return;
A lone tower stands, its proud foundation weakened,
its bastion ruined, blackened;
A vestige of the vision of wise men,
inhabited now by vultures and vermin;
Crumbling, but hoping still to outlast time itself.

The sea, the winds, left behind;
Life passes by, and life goes on.
The world looks different; alive and surreal,
as I watch, dreamy-eyed, 
from my refuge on the window seat.