[Photo: ‘The Edge of Forever’ by Steve Bidmead – Pixabay]

We are not just talking about the sea here… but also about sitting meditation… or inquiring within… See if you can submerge your ‘self’ into the words…

Ken is intimately familiar with the sea… particularly the South China Sea, having served his country many decades ago, holding to the deck evened or tempered by the shifting horizon… as the levitating bow rises to the sky and plumbs the ever-present depths of waves… I served too, but mostly on the ground, with forays into the hot steamy clouds by helicopter. But it’s the sea that calls me with his poem, having lived by or near its edge, at times, most of my life… playing by the sounds of surf and gulls, later life-guarding overseeing the line where sky kisses water… sailing in the harbor learning to go indirectly, ‘tacking’…zig-zaging into the wind… walking the beaches at all hours… breathing the sea-vapors… mesmerized, visioning the jeweled vastness laid out before me… and feeling inward to my deepest dimensions. It becomes easy for me to use ‘sea’ as metaphor for openness of mind… its currents and constant movement as time… memories as backwash and receding surf… granular moments as shifting sands… thoughts as fishing for meaning. Born under the sign of Pisces ‘ocean’ is a powerful presence for me… and perhaps for Ken as well…

AT SEA
by Ken McKeon

First wishes,
So easily forgotten
Until they stir like fish
Just waking up within a dream of the sea,
Waves cross overhead,
Their weight is the heaving
The moon spells across the shorelines of our lives,

We are awash with them,
Our bodies spill out
This way and that,
And when we fall,
The rush away from stumbling
Becomes a path to sudden clarity and ease,
The backwash is irresistible,
Eyes brighten with laughter,
The completed skin
Is finally alive,

Joy is here in the open stillness realm
Found between the rolling swells,
Simply let it settle out as it will,
It’s how you would too
If you were the sea,
Peaks and further peaks
Ease away now
As distance vanishes
On this rare day,
Always present when at sea.

• This topic was modified 3 years ago by David Filippone.