Holding Sand

“Holding Sand”


                I.

We sit
staring at that
Slippery cerulean sea of senses
Awed by the beauty
And what it could mean.

It overwhelms
It’s scope surpasses
All those sandy-eyed
Early morning half-dreams
That we don’t quite dare
To be real.


            II.

Then
Without any source of consensus
We get pushed.
Falling hard
Onto the gritty sand
Scrabbling for something
Easy to grasp.
Cutting our hands on
Broken homes of dead sea dwellers
And unknowingly fingering long
Strands of damply Sinewy
Sea nets, trapping
Some in their logical continuity.

We learn about colors.
We grasp them like
Greedy handfuls of sand
Blue. Red. Yellow. White.
Playing for a small while
With their simple life.

Somewhere, we found God.
The idea. 
Turning it over and over
In our hands, hording.


          III.

But, knowing that,
Our fun is spoiled.
Colors are added to colors
And they don’t remain
The simple scratchy handfuls
Become too much for
Our underexposed minds
To hold.

Blue was always above us,
Bright during day
Terrible when the sun was gone.
Red is the wonderful
Tint of smiling cheeks.
And the damp stench of blood.
Yellow became our sand in the sun
And the essence of
The too-hot fire
That lit our limited way,
As we counted our sand.
White was fluffy-pure
Of those light clouds
But all-too-easily spoiled
By one careless little drop
Of another little color.

The over present grumble
Of the sense filled sea
Thudding within our hollow chests
Reminding; it calls us there.

They showed us words,
Letters, scratched across
Paper matching
the pale pink-pearl hue
of the sharp shells of sea life
littered across the vast
hair lifting, finger twitching
gateway of the open ocean.

The letters
Written in the damply dry sand-
Our sandscript-
They fascinated.
We ran around
Writing rapidly.
Only to see our
Sandscript eagerly
Licked away
By the lusting hungry sea.


          IV.

Starting us on further
Philosophy; we find out
About big words: like
Fatalism. Naturalism. Existentialism.
We had to try,
Try to hold on
To our frail hand-grasps of dusty sand
While more mounded on
Too much, too much!

Our early-found idea
Of God,
Our most precious sand,
Got confused, but it was there.

A few fragile
Sons and daughters, babies and children
Playmates and scapegoats
Crumpled.
Caving towards the cobalt sea
Of sensual pleasures.
They partake.
And we can hear their
Lewd, feverish laughter
Like those mocking
Dirty gulls circling
All around our
Desperate hordes of grubby sand,
Rising up to meet the
Rapacious grumbling of the sea.

We tried to hold on to other things
By forsaking some.
Colors mixed and bled around us,
Soggy black turned to soggy grey
While blue and yellow trusted
And green appeared.
Words started losing and gaining
Too many meanings.
One by one, we lost some to that sea
And strained our eyes to see the sand
In the now dimming
World of pink-purple-blue
Fiery twilight.

          V.

Somewhere,
Our most precious sand,
Our only God-sand,
Slipped through our full fingers.
Many fled.

Joining the shrieking grumble
Of the zealous sea,
While we jealously watched
Searching our soul-fisted sand
For that single grain
Knowing it must appear

Trying not to lose
Anything else, we searched
For that God-sand,
It always falling
From our too filled hands.