Reflections upon All those years the water has washed these wet lit rocks, sharpening and polishing, polishing and sharpening. I sit on the sea wall
watching
cars
spin opening
from that arched
between two towers in Narragansett. Rounding the curve, they slide by my shoulder with their shadows and whistles. Other side, waves sizzle their fringe of rutted white, forgotten to those straight
staring
eyes in
cars.
I must be on my way the sand is running through I can't leave this scene are not surely ahead On the ribboned roadway, nor do they hold risky certainty as the fringes continually daring their form to the wind. I have no certain way to pass over each stone. What next? We all say,
yet. My eyes
holding
our
under the
questings
armour
Every passing
eye
graduation
Far
thoughts beyond
this one rock stuck till assaulted by wave thrusts, beyond you two towers, stationary till unconceived storms shake your solid frame, thoughts to shake this wall, this stranger's mind passing by Four years to be fed the words of others who have once had such open
inquiry, who have
once
searched those
curving watery lines to find that one rope tugging. We have learned the names, the compositions, the smooth answers of those who've researched. Now the turn comes for us to grip after the waiting and sitting and listening The ideas, what of them? Are we better off memorizing the substance of rocks, the dynasties of kings and queens, contrivances of state and country, the fine linked verse of poets?
of silence.
stops
wide blue ripple, if for one instant I have no instant in my gaze, but only a slower yearning to hold it there, finally, after the books, papers, tests; after the grades we must earn to to watch the
leave, which to ride away without flinching Everyone will leave with mild, overdone information on
lacking originality for this year's ending on this beach's highway, with a path so clearly defined and yet as changeable and unmapped as a storm upon these sands.
If it has
pointed
edge, opening noticed
or
us
to
one
line
before,
behold, with
a crevice add but a link between what was perceived ten or ten thousand years before and what is preserved today in this view, then, we have begun our own
to
structure.
Two rocks above water have a scene in this play song or formula An openess runs through the page edges after the flapping or
of
so
many
chapters
that still bids and challenges each one to answer with his next beginning breath. on a sea
Barbara
Siegel
1979
225