Poem: Coastal Trail

 

Coastal Trail

 

cobble-shore frost nips me, forty miles an hour,

awkward stupid animal

to slip on icy boulders,

and squelch in smoky seawater--

 

only a hundred sperm-whale lengths to go.

 

waves crash on the curse of crags

and ratchet up the odds of death;

they turn ocean spray into Lot’s wife,

a disassemble of salt and ghost.

 

over and over, this nameless wife,

she vaporizes, leaps, vaporizes, leaps…

 

i pretend i am more special than she, 

because i have a name,

even though my name means little,

for it will die with me--

 

and i try to find 

in a donnybrook of hail

the strings of a parachute, 

for no angel will protect me

if i fall off a cliff.

 

or maybe one will.  it must be.

so it must.

thousands of poems to write

before i go.

 

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7/19/23 ... considerable flow and quality edits

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