Spellbound Waves

Wave follows wave, as wave followed wave,
endlessly summoned, endlessly came;
each born of the water, each lost to the same,
forever returning, but never the same.

Beneath burning sunsets, beneath paling dawns,
through turquoise stillness the deep current runs;
through thunder and tempest, through wind and through rain,
they rise from the darkness and enter again.

They gather, they shatter, they whiten the shore,
then slip into silence and gather once more;
what falls becomes rising, what ends is begun,
the measure of ages beneath moon and sun.

Commandments lie drowned in the fathomless deep;
gods lay their tribute where dark waters sleep;
sirens surrender their songs to the tide,
and sailors their names where the lost waters hide.

Still some set sail for a faraway shore,
where ancient gold glimmers through legend and lore;
through darkness they wander, through tempests endure,
for wounds without names, for an unnamed cure.

Once, as a child, he ran laughing through foam,
while waves chased his footprints and followed him home;
years came like the waters, each bearing a name,
each touching the shore, but leaving him changed.

He came back a lover; she walked at his side,
their shadows made one at the edge of the tide;
then one evening he came to that shoreline alone,
the sea was unchanged. But the woman was gone.

And year after year he returned to the foam,
as though something lost might remember the way home;
not knowing if love, or a truth, or a name
was what he still sought in the waves that still came.

And still across waters old messages glide,
sealed inside green glass and borne on the tide;
entrusted to currents, to depths still unknown,
in hope that the sea may return what we’ve thrown.

He dreamed of green glass lying still on the sand,
sea-worn and sealed by an invisible hand;
inside, ancient words that the waters had cast,
an answer still sealed to a question unasked.

So waves came before him, before his first dawn,
and waves would remain when his last one was gone;
through sunlight and tempest, through pleasure and pain,
forever returning, but never the same.

As dawn follows dawn, none returns here again;
as life follows life, each is lost to its name;
only death, in the end, keeps perfect refrain,
while the spellbound waves are never the same.

One pale evening, when daylight grew old,
the tide brought the answer, still sealed, still untold;
emerald glass where the dying waves foam..
unopened.

He turned home.