Mid-Life Poem by Laurence Overmire

My dreams collapse
on some battered wave-washed shore,
the fragments
sparkle in the sand,
mingling in time
to be collected
once again,
while the old man with the whiskered face
smiles
from the open window of his driftwood shack,
smoking his pipe
like a riddle waiting for an answer.

I must swim in the pounding surf,
beneath the pull of moon and star
and simple seeming sun,
the horizon holds an eerie light
be it dawn or dusk I do not know,
but muscles move
in syncopated time
until I reach that steady line,
as imaginary
as any dream
or puff of smoke from an old man's pipe.


(Previously published in Kimera, Dec.1998)