Borne back ceaselessly into the past

Yesterday tugs at me

like undertow.

Beach bums say

(from birds’ first cries at break of day

to sweet whispers of sunsets and red sails)

that I better watch out

or I’ll be fetched far from the happy shore

along with childhoods, daisies, favorite books,

meaningful looks, old fishermen’s shoes and folktales,

and hauled downward below the continental shelf

where everything that ever happened

is stored for safekeeping

in Davy Jones’ locker.

Titanic is there,

with  Lusitania, Edmund Fitzgerald, Empress of Ireland,

assorted sea monsters, sirens and songs, silenced now,

except in dream remnants flying like prayer flags

while their dreamers ceaselessly seek their future.

Yesterday caresses my feet like undertow

and the lifeguards say

I better watch out

or I’ll be ripped from an uncertain littoral

strewn with shells where long-gone creatures once lived

downward below the surface of known thought

where everything that ever happened

is locked away with ghost stories.

Yesterday whispers to me

like undertow

and the philosophers say

that I better watch out

or I’ll be come and gone with fleeting gestalts,

sunny afternoon dust motes, twilight inklings,

eye-blink gods and lives without faults

left out of history’s footnotes

that are kissed and missed forever

by all that has been borne

into the sleep of the deep.

Ceaselessly,

beach bums, life guards and philosophers

warn me with each red sky of morning

and every menacing grey twilight of gales

that yesterday is made of mirrors and smoke,

merely a mirage of dreams and lights across the bay.

Nonetheless, tomorrow or sooner than tomorrow,

I will ignore those fading cries of reason

because I’m watching less out than in,

aging upon the new season like spirits in oak.

Tomorrow, then, when yesterday calls me

with the words of wondrous once-upon-a-times,

turtle doves and lonely lost loves,

she will promise me many worlds, quantum leaps,

vision quests, and cave shadows in perfect pantomimes,

and like all I lack,

I’ll be borne back.

copyright (c) 2013 by Malcolm R. Campbell