One Single Impression: One Word

There are times
I cannot take the picture
Cannot ask the camera
And my own weak eye
To copy perfection

I give up
I forget about me
And the story
I would tell
If I could
As if it were mine
To tell

Of the curl of the wave
That moment when the
Top of the wave emerges from its body
Before it dives head first
Into its own great self
Before the shattering
Before the mess of white foam
Before the noise

In this moment
The wave is only the wave--
Not rock or sand or sound or sea or air

My heart stops
And I won't breathe

Until the moment repeats itself

Even as the noise and the foam engulf me.

The "one word" of this poem is wave, of course. Last week as I stood on the beach over and over again, I watched the waves roll in. It seemed to me there is some magic that shapes each wave out of the vast and mysterious, endlessly moving, and richly alive ocean. I played a game with my camera, trying to capture the precise moment the wave seemed to have a mind of its own and consciously decide to return to the sea--as if having stretched out and taken in the light of day in a matter of seconds it was right and good to slip back to the beginning. I never got what I wanted with my camera; I really didn't care because in the end it didn't matter.

One Single Impression