wreckage--driftwood--on a ridge of water trailing from a distant past--hope & forbearance--listening to the sea birds fighting over tidal scraps--the dull wave-- motion casting shadows further & further out--resembling the usual numbness day brings. in the evening you read books about history (european) & afterwards the suicides of massada--darkness no longer calms the nerves  insomnia erodes-- each hour--shored against an ocean of ruins (nausea, peristalsis).  the body like a shell echoes with each barren thudding of the wind--the wind gathered from distant longitudes from the other side of the world--patagonia perhaps?  or tierra del fuego?  along the beach there are children collecting pieces of driftwood--petrified-- fossils almost of prehistoric memory.  grey  pebbles too beneath a veil of seaweed &  pale sand flecked with ash. some call this easter--where no christ was ever cast up from the dead ... distance echoes with superstition: out there the southern cross gradually fades in the sky above a pyre of brittle driftwood.  dawn-- & rain-clouds extinguish the sun-- shroud vision.  in a moment it will be winter

  © 1998