Crescent Beach Shoreline Poem by Candice James

Crescent Beach Shoreline

© Candice James, Poet Laureate Emerita,
New Westminster, BC CANADA

(For Maryann Bowles)

The evening sky is crisp and clear.
With invisible hands, she props up a wet moon
more reticent than overt; more hungry than thirsty.

The Crescent Beach shoreline is muted.
Tidal meanderings caress and rinse
the dark edges of seaweed and stone to a shine.
A bevy of twinkling stars
poke holes in the black tapestry above
trying to save the sky from being swallowed up
in night's gaping maw.

And all that dust and glitter
haloing the stars and novas
covers uptheir secrets, hides their poems
and blankets their silence;
but where does their silence go?
At what podium are their poems read?
At what altar are their secrets exposed?
The pages of their lives: embers sparking, flickering,
burning out in the fading whispers
of days and nights that will not come again.
Where do their secrets and poems go?

The glint and glimmer of the Milky Way
lights our journey to the stars and back again.
From inception, birth, and breath
to exhalation, expiration and death
rising from cold ash to burning spirit,
the spark of soul never to be destroyed..

The evening sky is crisp and clear.
I am almost asleep in the arms of my familiar ghosts.
Drinking from the lip of the wet moon,
as it pushes and pulls at the Crescent Beach tide,
a dead memory enters my mind on the soft satin slippers
that once trod the dreams of my lost yesterdays.

The wind whispers sweet nothings
to the tide as it slips away on little cat feet
into the burnt out dust of a star
and the wayward sway of an evanescent moon.
The Crescent Beach shoreline falls asleep …
perchance to dream.