ON THE BEACH MANZANITA: by Bruce Parker
It seems, as one becomes older, That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence — T. S. Eliot, “The Dry Salvages”
The smallest of waves sweeps the shallows and washes back
into oncomers — a white line forms, rips across
barely submerged sand, a lightning bolt of seawater.
The mind sweeps its memories back across incoming time
like a swirling pattern of unceasing sea, fractal yet fragmented,
touched and rearranged by embers of significance which glow,
sheet lightning in a thunderhead of the brain.
Seeing this ocean compound its movement,
on a walk with a lover, was sudden illumination, a glimpse
of understanding how the universe works, unsequenced,
developing nothing but moments, brief moments of happiness.
Love circles back to a wet embrace with an oncoming other,
shivers, slides swift and silent to light the memory
here and there in no order at all.