ASPIRATION

Into that vast, expansive sea,
Known as prose and poetry,
I let some rhyming droplets fall,
In the hope that when the call
For a poet's list is drawn and done,
Perhaps they'll mention me as one.

SEA AT SATTAHIP (excerpted from the short story "Timing It" from "Soldiers in Siam") see Associated Links on upper left of page.

I stop, pause my normal thoughts and ask,
will I be able for long to keep you
locked within my mind
as I saw you then?
Not casting waves shoreward
by molding them out near your horizon,
building on them, pushing them onward
to slap and bathe the silent, waiting, accepting,
soft, cement-white sand
as other seas I have seen.

Just what was it then?
Some grand power
lifting the whole of your blue-green body
gently
so that your islands sink within you.
And then-
down you come, complete and sure,
all-at-once,
and at the water-land's line
a slip of you begins to rise,
imperceptibly,
then gaining to a leap, arching, tossing off a burst of drops
white and pure into the face of the Southeast Asian sun,
cresting to a carefree plunge, landing cat's paw soft,
skipping up the reaches of sand,
disappearing beneath,
loud as cat's breath.