Gone
A wave is not like a sailboat; with a sailboat,
you can see both sides. A wave is like a battle;
it doesn’t show you its back.
-The Perfect Storm
-Sebastian Junger
Volatile as a struck match,
your anxiety puffs up
and forces you to walk and burn
at the same time.
*
A lashing wind lifts breakers,
shatters them on the beach.
Astonished, heedless,
your thrilled children
laugh wildly, burst out the screen door
and charge toward the sea,
leaving behind the iconic song and dance
of the opening and closing
of the wood screen door.
It creaks, its spring stretches,
it clashes into itself
as if to be sure
it is truly closed.
From behind the screen,
you watch your two kids,
giddy, being chased by the angry sea.
For just a moment your anxiety wanes,
and you began to feel their joy,
remembering it from your own childhood,
yet you’re intensely aware of that
organdie shadow fluttering inside you
soliciting your attention –
— anxiety will always have its way
yet the children’s fledgling exuberance
still causes you smile with love.
*
For just a moment your anxiety ebbs,
and you began to understand their joy.
You smile.
A massive breaker explodes onto the beach.
When it retreats
the beach is deserted.
*
Through tears,
you tell the police
the wind was blowing the waves so hard
it sounded like a freight train,
which, of course, it did not.
We’re just a little village,
you say,
no one even locks their doors.
These kinds of things
just don’t happen here,
which, of course, they do.
When the unimaginable happens
and you cannot speak,
ancient, universal hyperbole
speaks for you,
immortal embellishment
appears instantly from nowhere,
in an effort to rescue
your bumbling speech.
In your urgency to find shelter for yourself,
you inconceivably forget, for a moment,
that your kids are still out there…
You are slapped in your face
by high caliber sea spray,
your breath replaced with storm water
which tastes like the atmosphere—
like dust, pollution, smog,
sand and debris – all of these contagions
packed into each fierce droplet.
On its own, your brain began
to think-
searching for sense, for reason.
The crest of the wave
must have snatched the children,
thrown them down into the trough,
and started breaking them apart
the way one would
break down an old refrigerator box-
tear and pull and split.
You stood dazed, staring out the window.
There was nothing in your view
but a windblown vacant beach
which erased all structure
and left just a seemingly endless
monochromatic wash of grays,
as the mindless gale
shredded whatever lay in its path.
You heard the brief laughter of excitement
as your kids burst out to the beach.
You were sure you could hear
the hazy sound of the door –
its iconic song and dance,
doors hinges and springs,
all screeches and squeaking,
closing and clapping,
slapping wood against wood,
as the door slammed shut.
It was not long before your conception
of what had actually occurred
became illuminated and perfectly sheer.
Both kids were gone,
and you sat at the kitchen table
weeping, thinking.
There must be another world,
you thought,
with only a small lake,
its mirror shine
reflecting yet another world
in which the people
had never learned sadness
or how to cry.
.
John L. Stanizzi is the author of 15 books: Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, Hallelujah Time, High Tide-Ebb Tide, Four Bits, Chants, POND, Sundowning, The Tree that Lights the Way Home, Feathers and Bones, Viper brain, and SEE. Johnnie is finishing book #16, now. He has poems in hundreds of journals, including Prairie Schooner, Cortland Review, Rattle, and many more. CNF in Literature & Belief, Stone Coast, and lots more. Creative Non-Fiction Fellowship 2021 from Connecticut Department of Arts.
Former New England Poet of the Year, Etherington Scholar at Wesleyan University. Lit. Prof. at Manchester Comm. College 27 yrs. Theater director, Bacon Academy 25 yrs.
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Stone Poetry Quarterly 