Fleeting lips of unfathomable futility

27 Lines On The Beach

No trace, no trail, no imprint left by tracker or
explorer who raced toward keepless promises
of legend, no marker visible save the sun’s
bright flag claiming this alone as her province,
this littoral of bare flesh midriffed before the sea,
ebbless salt glistening in thin layers blonding sparse
strands of tiny hairs that raise their villous yearn
against a surge that surrenders in rapt allegiance
to fall at her naked feet from two worlds away.

This is you standing before the threshold of our
emergence, where every footed thing walked out
from before we thought to remember doing so.
This is your home as it is mine, as it is home to
every dreamer who dared in our unfolding history.
As we left sisters behind to stroll the deep currents
that wash over us in moments that siren the heart
to soothe their moon-torn stormcrests, so we left
brothers to buoy the bottom of a crabless kingdom.



And so we stand, together in this brief epoch, a
moment of delirious prospect made possible by
luminous shapings of forces we cannot enumerate
by calculation or position by starmap for to attempt
such would be to place a kiss of chance upon fleeting
lips of unfathomable futility. Thus, before you, a
primeval beauty awaits the smooth fin of your foot,
a tidal sky summons you to come forth and breathe
again what once flooded gills to build the first sigh.

Joseph Gallo
October 15, 2010