My Current Situation Poem by Michael Walkerjohn

The coffee
dark, sweet
hot, bare feet
pad past on the
promenade; dogs
walking their keepers
as all dogs should, and the
children masked, playfully skip
along the sitting wall above the beach.
As the vehicles come and go, spilling
out loads of families eagerly poised
to take the stroll beneath a late
afternoon and this vibrantly
setting sun. IAM pleasantly
stunned, politely humbled
spiritually calming down
slowly regenerating my
essence; soaking upon the
invisibility awash in the sounds
of ocean waves releasing the last of
the energies which created each …
Above this beach where humanity
gathers in the quiet of individual
contemplation and joy of a family's
elations I sit, and in solitude I wright …
And I continue to listen, and sit contently
watching mostly unnoticed, the novice by
choice, on an experienced inner voiced
personable personally considering; my
worth to all humanity, questioning the
origins of each seed necessary for all
this to be; profoundly, as remotely
viewing the composite of energies
dedicated to every entity allowed to
remain living, in this picturesque and
symbolic panorama of one simplistic
moment in one simplistic reality
and ask my essence why … lighting
my ‘Philly, ' willing the cool breeze to
allow me thus, the taste of leaf, that
Carolina remembrance; as my smoke
rises into the softening blue of this
west coast shoreline's skies … and
again, I ask my essence why, such
moments as these are ‘allowed' to be
while the ‘wider world', smolders in the
‘fires of disrupting living'; as momentarily my
calm escapes me until I look up into the sun
and out towards the horizon and watch a
rather large ‘V' of gulls settle down on the
calmed waters below and behind the surf line
on the silently darkening beach … as my thoughts
wander and question three soaring gulls glide across
the face, of my lowly solitude, and I begin to think
more deeply of the thought‘ what cliffs humanity
faces continually; ' then one solitary sailing craft
passes … a single gull soars past, the ants move
through the soil beneath my feet the breeze
now noisily moves past and a rumbling
within me increases … an awareness
heightened arises and thoughts flow
across the ages in depths so vast of the
universe shaken gently by the events I
see soon coming and again the people pass…
I hear the steps, catch the odd word, breathe in
the coolness of the coastal atmosphere as elsewhere
suffering continues to be ‘the normal, ' in a world so
filled of plenty; while the finches sing and flutter on
their perches in bushy enclaves above Torrance Beach
naming my perch, not the daily occurrence but surely
more than somewhat pleasurable as more join me
above this beach like the birds to their feeding, each
individual filling the need in this moment to stop and
stand or sit on this wall around me … more so as me
doing so silently, witnessing the sun setting peacefully
as elsewhere across and around this earth, humankind
yet struggles and I truly question why … in such a place
as this thatin this day and age there remains a struggle
throughout all of humanity for individual parity expressively
and, continually continuing to be such the question … as with
life in becoming ‘the being' that each is, in essence simply part
of the sum of a greater organism; this is the ‘whole of humanity'
a consideration very few of US ever mull; unless one has sat
upon mountain tops or beneath old growth trees, or hung
until dead upon ‘ a symbolic cross' … IAM up and off the
beach left out an evening walk in the sand, got that
tough to walk problem; on once again the comfortable
backwall perch at the ‘Coffee Cartel' in ‘Riviera Village'
finally visiting again as allowed by the SoCal reopening …
Taro Boba beckoning; paperbacks, personal best-read
hacks, the Random House dictionary, and a reduced
inventory of loaners; that two metre spacing thingy
keep small and quiet, the early Saturday evening
attendance and IAM on the clock of my ‘better-half'
still … and continuing to be the under-simplification
of a relationship, just assuming I yet make some of
the rules or simply kowtow to the only thing I ever
kowtowed too … the female bellowing! All of that
energy expended when a sensual whisper would
suffice! Oh, for a return to that first year's enrichments!
When I, was presented with the penultimate ‘fu fighter'
and age had not yet conquered me … the physicality
of this thing of dust and water forever weakening
since conception! And there are no exceptions
only a decade or less of optimized operation
re-read the instructions on how quickly
your physical body deteriorates! Scary this!
Because you are most often most over, before
you become aware of the true ‘inherent weakness'
within the design! Machiavellian machicolate, machicolation
machinate, machine; nada having ado with the physical
natures of a body human! How depressing this
regression from a Beachwalk's smiling faces
to this inner reaching personal lamentation
about the status of my current situation …