A Wave

gathers into a towering question
mark of spume
and courses beyond oceans

leaving a wake of debris,
weed, shells, coconut skulls,
a bewitched forest

of driftwood, splintered
oar blades folded like hands
of the dispossessed

whose prayer is an unclenched fist,
the horizon's tarnished brass band
marking high tide on the sand—

what's yet to be, strewn
among what's surfaced
of water's cryptic history—

and the wave, suspended, scrolls
inward without breaking,
continues, released from continuity,

undulates through sleep,
dunes, dreams, snowdrifts,
duration, wheat . . .

Above a foamy field,
where the flattened girth
of distance

smells less of freedom,
than of earth, crows
translate the foreign bray

of seabirds. Those
born inland
remember the sea.

Copyright © 2009 Stuart Dybek All rights reserved
from Northwest Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission