In the Sand
BY JOSHUA KAM
That year we took the November like the braids
of a woman, went to the sea with nets. How
we reminded our ourselves of the honorable
exception: Today.
Today we would catch a small fish.
We almost never did. One day we returned
and found the thin, tenuous stuff of
its skin in a net you had left behind.
Cold, and smooth in the hand.
And the Sea, always a giver of last, but never first
rewards, departed, its fins deep in the waves as it
leapt from the net.
Many stones and moons later, my spirit
wandered back to the memory, wailing.
That which comes in waiting drowns in fruition.
If only as the papaya flower must
to Become.
Turning the gray threads of a Book
a shadow in me recognizes revelations.
Lion, lamb, the anonymous child.
Oh? But what is joy without
desire, his wide lover? Hunger without its jar?
What is heaven without Longing?
Or earth, without consummation?
Not for me to know. Only to grasp, as even
the unblinking water does, or as all life must.
The body turns, but the spirit still wails,
away from the Knowing it has no heart to
know.