Maureen Kesner - Ebb

Where ruminant dreams create a sea
Whose breadth
and girth
and depth
are not even fathomable to me
By sun it cries,
By moon it weeps,
for on its shores a child is asleep
Who'd dare not wake
nor stir
nor sigh
though the cold heathen winds
from mountain nigh
chill palm and cheek and fevered breast
These are nothing -
No difference
be it trough or crest.

The sea,
it howls,
it poignant feels
the child's awakening
and from supine he kneels.

His hushed prayer in rippling bends
through eddies
then swirls
in the sea's navel ends.

His peace is buoyed by the flowing sea
Washing up sand, and on shore
to nourish shady tree,
On rising foam and salty spray,
Gulls strewn on rocks,
In sky hued blue-gray.

But rude awakenings make for waning dreams.
Pulling rending undertows,
peeling tides,
labored neaps,
and ebbs extreme.

Well, again, does this lull our sleeping child
Who loved but a dream, why wrenched so wild.
Where first was fair
then pale
now deathly,
his august cheek in this new sleep
gave to pallor steadily.

With the breakers, the last ebb comes in.
It pulls back with it a young soul serene.
Lay to rest a beating dream
Where to crash headlong
we don't know
except for cliff then echo
down below
then mingle with flotsam
in the open,
and head for the straits
where the sea
is broken.

Maureen Kesner

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ebb-6/