From the ocean’s far horizons

And through the haze

Of a lazy afternoon,

A breeze,

Sure in temperament,

Comes to presence

In the buffeted leaves

Of a salt-hardy species,

Rooted in sand.

–

My hair rustles

Like the broad-leafed trees

Of the tropics,

And my skin

Feels every pulse of the wind,

Every sun-warmed vibration.

–

The afternoon

Settles in the glimmering sea

And waves roll ever beachward,

Rising up

And falling,

Curled and called under

And then sluced forward

In the tide’s fluid sinking away.

–

I am yet again touched by constance:

The air, like reality,

Dynamic in flow,

The great liquid medium

Offering a soft percussion,

The leaves gently scratching

Their waxy neighbours,

Even the crows irregular calls

And eagles’ warbling cries

Speak of this singular theme

Of stillness in movement,

A happening in the heart of things,

A now containing all that could be.

–

What am I in this

Air-caressed and skin-warmed perception?

What is it that hears the sea

Cool upon the sand?

Who’s heart,

A sponge to the whole,

Drinks in the indulgence of the senses?

–

I have no answers

But for the slithers of light

Dazzling on the turbulence

Of the world’s

Blue-green globe,

Reaching beyond my understanding,

No answer

But for the soaring eagles

Expertly high on thermal wing,

No answer

But for the sway of branches,

Supple and bending

To and fro,

Chlorophyll fronds

Like my fingertips,

Feeling it,

Alive and inside

The whole

Of God’s own synthesis.