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Facing the Tide
i stand facing a tide
receding one way
while my hairline
recedes the other
though, for me,
there'll be no
getting younger
that ageless tide
will come back in tomorrow
and i'll walk the shore
searching for pieces
of the shipwreck
that took you
many blanketed moons ago
many wretched storms
previous
in my life
though there are
no pieces to mend
that'll i'll ever
hope to find
i'll continue
to end each day
the very same way
as i must today
standing,
facing the tide
receding
from my empty hands
having spent all day
sifting through foam and sand
searching for a graspless
piece of mind
a stranded,
washed up survivor
of a ghost ship that wrecked -
just a dream
may be all you were
but no one can convince
me that you didn't chart my course
nor
that you weren't destroyed
i stand facing the tide
The circularity between the
The circularity between the first and last lines suggests the tide's regularity, and the short lines seem like the movement of the tides along the shore. That gives a great underscore to the subject matter of the poem, a way to visualize the metaphor while reading its powerful presentation in the poem.
Starward
I love and appreciate that
I love and appreciate that you picked up on that! At the onset of writing this, it came along quite naturally and without thought, just trusting the feeling of the flow, and then I became more conscience of it as the got deeper into the poem. Just being in the metaphor and hearing the waves of the tide - having grown up and lived much of my life close to the shore - created a sort of back beat, poetically speaking.