EBB

When is one sure that retreat is the best option?     Could it be the sun and moon have aligned to pull me away from resolution.    I feel that to go offshore now would actually end up leaving me high and dry.    I could wait for the full moon and walk back up the beach.  I could just lie there in the tall rye grass above the storm bank with the other flotsam.   I could try and hide, dwindle away like the sand during a wind storm; nothing left but a pedestal under my feet.    I subside within; I founder.    I am lost.   I have no answer.   My little tide book tells me when to rise and when to wane, but what of those other orbits, how do they influence the rising and falling of our little seas?   Will your tears raise the flood and then swamp each into the ocean as all recede into its retreat.    I might just try and tide myself over in this little dinghy of mine.  Now all I really need is an anchor and its long chain to keep from being swept far out to sea; withdrawing off the edge of your world.

I am not sure what it is I love about the sea.    Not the rocking ground swelling waves, they make me sick with their slowly rolling my ship from side to side.   The salt?  That must be it, the salt.   We all must have a little sodium to keep our tears flowing.    The sand?  The waves on the beach rock the sand back and forth grinding into uniform grains; soft under bare summer feet; warm between our toes. 

I pull back, retire, give way, give ground, can you not see I have lost foresight in my hasty defeat?    I watch and wait.   You have asked me to examine this shell for some creature .   I am soon to become the crab like hermit. See here my brittle claws.   I hardly need to feel your flesh.   I will simply withdraw, the tide has left me apon this narrow stretch of what was once the love of my life.   Nigh untouchable, wrapped in seaweed; no more a face; darkness. Oceanas, please roll and pitch me to sleep. Rock me back and forth in this shallow pool. The stars both above and below tell me, be still and becalmed; the storm is yet to rage.

Storm, oh my storm! Button down; batten down; the waves began to roar along the shoal; the crushing crash of the hull; all hands abandon ship. Now my beach is strewn with tangled rigging, split spars, and sail torn. Which has failed? What is that naked form all white and puffy floating face down, sliding up, then down, with each wave. I reach down, roll it over, only to see that gulls have already had the soft tasty eyes. Oh please! Give me back my eyes.

Land ho!   

How is it I have again and again sailed too close to those shoals? With full sail I dared each gale.  To weather, round the point, almost without fail. I have foundered, sunk both captain and crew. Wrecked again and again, but why? Why have I continued to sail these desperate waters; never wide enough and never deep enough to navigate safely. Where is my harbor? Again and again I put to sea without you. I sit below in my cabin rocking, up and down, each ground swell making me more sick.   

Wherefore my first mate?  

Mutiny? 

Hanging there among the gallows. Who swings there? A long tailed jeager perches on its left shoulder, its beak tugging the swollen black tongue, the body pitches with the ship, swings into view, only then do I behold. I see now.  It was I !

No tongue, eyes gone, what other organ might I spare?    These hands that write and plot, what should I do without them?   Would I spare you all my suffering?   l know not why but I must share.   It is an unwritten rule!   I can no more put down this pen then ask the wind to stop it's howl or to beg the sun stay an extra hour past night fall. I am sure, I am not sure. What I search for is a pilot to guide me out of this precarious port. I have eyes still but I am blind, and my tongue too; I have her still, but being tied up has been forced to utter only base commands and orders course.   Feeling from this pen marked paper only.   

Does it appear I again and again grope for the receding?   Even though listing I am on a long reach for refuge. Would you lie here with me?   Could it be you are my sanctuary? I am not looking for another solitude. Share? What a strange word. I need an explanation. Life offers first its cradle then its end only; the in-between are ours to make as we dare.  I dare you!  

Another page.  Another search into my retreating soul. Each time I get lost in the pain of my past but closer and closer does my orbit align with truth. Should I continue to share? What is the point you ask and what joy could there be in bringing you the reader to tear? If I touch you where you dared not touch yourself, you tell me if there is, in the end, any difference. Yes, you tell me. 

I still reach and reach for reason regardless of the day or night.   I can not let these impressions be. I am both the father and mother of these memories. I am both brother and sister fighting  forever over recollections.   While it appears I give myself nothing but bothersome isolation; I give you freely: page after page of options.  

I give to you safe harbor while I ebb and ebb.