Driftwood Poem by Ross Cohen

The sea turns youth into an aged thing:
Wood worked by Protean hands, strong lines
Changed into faded and level grain.
White rings surround a browned
And barnacled body: the desiccant kiss
Of salt-spray.

Some forest relic, some survivor torn
From the tree-root to suffer
Saw and nail and a life’s measure of use.

Now jostled by flotsam and jetsam,
Adrift, listless, unmoored from its safe
Harbor, its coniferous wood.

And each hard-earned knot is caught
And released into the sea; and each twisted year is taken
Off the tree, or blurred,
Or loosed into a blue oblivion;

Until, one day, there is landfall
On the farther shore, the wood awash,
Foetal and still, having no memory
Before the sea.

And all that is left, that can be held,
Is of the going and not the port;
The journey and not the start;
The patient, indefensible pull
Toward the end.

And such is our end:
Driftwood at rest on a bed of sand.