near Morro Bay – a poem by Isabel Chenot

near Morro Bay


i.
The grey above
is almost resting
on the waves –

across their cresting –
rifted dove.

The columns totter
but their architraves
are white.

Far off, pearled between,
level to sight –
a hand.

Its fingers fissure sand,
divide the water,
rein back daylight.


ii.
My soul is sand:
now, and no memory –

a mirror
out of grit and glister –
each instant's trivial

abrading grains
sift the whole

sea
and sky.
Absorb their pound

and color,
drink immensity.
Hold tide

until my hand
is sheerer
than the moon's veins.


iii.
At dawn
the water and the sky
are seamless,

someone's
fluttering
clothes.

I am so little,
so much younger
than those
elements.

I have to lose
my lone will stuttering
at variance.

I have to empty
like the sand
in the stripped instants
after a wave's
passion –

when gravityless
heaven

prints bright fingers
on earth's
sinking
hand.

Isabel Chenot has loved, memorised, and practised poetry all her remembered life. Some of her poems are collected in The Joseph Tree, available from Wiseblood Books.