Stone waves, hard and crushing, 
   loud and crashing,
fall upon submissive rolling waters
   running for the shore.

I walk upon the quiet 
  grains of age-old sand,
their now unique and unrepeated combinations
  sinking and changing
  beneath my irrelvant feet.

I stoop to pick up a stone and
  cast it back into the waters,
back to the raging torrents which
  had brought it there,
my insignificant cast lost
  in a rush of overpowering waves.

The stone fell and yet did not fall,
was carried on by the current there,
  that pull of of mighty power.
It spited me to run again to the shore.

Winds called the calls they have called
  for eons
Singing the songs the hills 
  and stones themselves had chanted
  in unison.

And I walked there, on that beach,
  on into what seemed an eternity of sand.

But my footsteps were lost behind me,
  to the shifting sands ofthis huge glass waist 
  through whose aperture Time runs on,
  wholly unaffected by such tiny steps as mine . . .

 

 -- Copyright (c) 1981, 2002  by Jerral Sapienza  --
You may reprint or distribute it provided entire copyright notice is included
 with the poem.   Published by Lifelong Learning Excellence, Inc.  (LLX.COM)
For permissions:  P. O. Box 380 * Eugene, OR  97440 * =USA= +1 (541) 343-1202
or write to Whispers -at- LLX.COM
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I wrote this as a dreamy 20-something, having wandered alone on the coastal sands at 
Newport, Oregon.   I was a dreamer then, even moreso than now, reminded of 
the overwhelming hopelessness and solitude we experience here on the Planet 
until we can Look Up and realize that much Bigger Picture of which we are 
all at least a part . . . 

 
     
-Jerral