These absent anapests and pale pentameters

like sequin strands I've woven into dress

to clothe myself in mystery and peril

the dark even mistress of language and memory

I am the shadow that you cast

hidden in the light

I float before and trail behind

violet with tumult of a city descending

I have taken the twilight

the transient blue of a tempered dusk

and wait, in a hush of longing, for your return

-DBR

Muir Beach, 2001

The waves are racing back beyond the blue

horizon; fleeting gulls recall their screams
to granite cliffs, as calm before they flew.
The grey within the clouds above now teems
in fury, white with rushing foam; the day
is waiting blank, as empty paper waits
for pen, as lyrics wait for singers gay
and true; it waits as even night is late.
I turn my pencil back to sunny skies
before I walked the sand, to green and gold
and dusky red, away from where I lie
and look to where the sea and sky unfold:
the rise and fall within the rise and fall,
the wasting time that flows beneath it all.

-DBR

and are you listening

behind those veiling hands

splitting slicing redress

is all tatters, frenzied pains

in streams of sour

yr bathing in unrest

summer salt, yet motionless

and yr crying too

and i've come seeking

some sense of quiet beside you

in deep night weeping

in a smothered silent room

where you are sleeping

submissive as the tomb

light streaming in

before and beyond you

-Martyn Bates

The waves returned to the Bible:

page by page the water closed:

all anger returned to the sea's center,

but between my eyes remain

the varied and useless treasures

left to me, the sea's dismantled love

and shadowy rose.

-Pablo Neruda