IN WHICH THE PHILOSOPHER CONSIDERS THE QUALITY OF TIME WHILE WALKING THE SHORE

                                                                              for jk


This is no ancient mariner, no
clam digger, it's a man with a blackberry

texting from the ocean's rim
among the children with buckets

building castles to ward off the waves'
slow scrawl, scratching glyphs in the sand

with driftwood sticks and seaweed 
flags. It's the issue of being and

time he's considering, the shimmer
and shadow of minnows in the shallows,

the hissing breath as the gentle waves 
recede, it's the scattered path of footprints

fading in the wet sand, the steady
pulse of the slow waves themselves, 

the slow combers unraveling into
foam, how that sailboat anchored offshore

rises and falls, how the amplitude of
dolphins swimming up the coast, diving

and surfacing, their slick gray skin and fins
perfect in the ocean, how the sun overhead

seems to arc across the sky, the faded
gibbous moon sinking in the eat, , and

here below his wet and callused feet 
scrabble over so many shells tumbling

ashore, sand dollars and sea stars battered 
and chipped, the sweet suck and pull of the soft

sand that buries his feet. 



And what of the thoughts of this man, the
dialogue unravelling in his mind

as he scours the shore, where is the record
of his great meditations, his postulates,

his arguments, his inner sanctum, 
his truth? 



You can hear them in the salty hiss,
the skittering legs of the plovers,

the bounce and clang of the harbor buoy,
the fading cries of seagulls -- there is no

"I," no sense of one's self, one's being
nothing remains here beyond these 

measurements, these particulars, the
space between his steps, his fading 

footprints, how the water's foam seems to
sink beneath the sand, and disappear.