Sandgrains
Voices of today
mix with the much longed for
songs of the past.
Nostalgia plucks sorrowfully
the strings of memory.
Keening notes
resound along my nerves,
a sudden chill
an arpeggio up my spine.
A cold June night
in an empty apartment
in a lonely Midwest town.
Radio the only company
playing the songs of summers passed.
Where are the friendly sands,
the lost innocence, the easy life,
the warm salt sprays?
What happened to the carefree,
the joyous beach generation
of time ago?
The bars are empty
the streets silent
under a full moon.
Silver rays freeze all
into a brisk nothingness.
Still that void expands,
fills me ...
it has always been there.
Without any edges
the emptiness cuts
with razor swiftness
never and always painful.
The hot summer sands
once burned out
this inner void,
but now the bleaching beaches
are so, ah, so, so far away.
Why are the lost simplicities,
the friendly sands, the gentile life,
the warm surf sprays gone?
What happened to the carefree,
the beach children
twenty years past?
The desolation remains with me.
The cornfields and music are
stark reminders of beaches
that remain out of reach
to a beach boy born
born a generation too late.
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Copyright © 1998 John B Cooke IV
House o' Poetry
Jack'n'Jim World