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1.
From the the sea, the sun ascended like angels,
its heat sweeping up in bursts of movement,
its remaining corona: hot matters to be settled.
I could live in huts of pictures, huts of thoughts.
I could speak as if the ocean had anecdotes.
When silence comes, it's held like particles of sand.
I chased down freshness before I knew what it was.
There on 6th and Boardwalk, was a vital birth;
all sand, all spray, all air and sweeping remembrance.
2.
It was not half bad in that seaside trailer,
that taciturn dwelling, narrow, but lovely with
the thought of a peace - a particular peace.
Your brother who died before the ocean knew him,
before, from that trailer, he could consider his life,
and before tall whimbrels cried over groveling waves -
He bought that future; never lived in it. Died on cold sand.
Why is there a haunting? Why do spectres
sit in the fullness of mists, their afterlives
tied to the former life of dwellers and thinkers,
bent on receiving elusive explanations?
In all the seas, there are inexplicable faces,
in all the houses loving the shore, there is confession.
3.
The ocean washes in memories, even
the ones that crash through calm sanity,
even when coastal city streets prepare for doom -
an image of a stranger sings as hard as cymbals.
The air is distorted. The shops are mute as seaweed.
Many are dead but they got to live first:
among the ghosts, one ghost cries the deepest.
Lamont Palmer
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