I Am Not Yours

Brilliant brass and rattle snares tramp down Main Street.

Perspiring politicians atop fire trucks pitch sweets and plastic beads.

Megaphone voices speak of god and country.

~

I am neither god’s soldier nor god’s vessel.

I am also not yours.

~

Flags branded FREEDOM whip and slap upon themselves in shifting airs.

Declarations of identity are asserted behind masks and brandished guns.

Hot tar melts candies through their wrappers.

The streets fill with waste.

My voice is lost in the din, the whoops and hollers.

~

I back away from the exaltation of violence,

abscessed community wounds,

ready to poison us all.

~

Gravity draws me to a different space.

~

My bare feet meet crisp grass.

I drift backward through the throng to the tree lined path that leads

toward the flats of the ebb tide.

The scent of privet yields to sun baked beach rose and tang of seaweed.

Human noise fades as I approach the hush of wave breaks.

~

Surf sounds roll sharp thoughts into sea glass smoothness.

I venture a half mile onto the flats,

through tide pools and over ribs of sand,

I stand upon the ocean floor unveiled by the tide.

~

I am drawn to the water’s reach,

the shock of cold eases as it swallows my lower half.

Light filaments shimmer along the glossy water surface,

the clash and tangle of the cosmos play out and around,

casting sun and shadow onto the subaqueous plane.

~

Small sand eels burst upward with each footfall,

then dart out of sight again.

Smelt fish glint green and silver as they shoal.

Bass shadows lurk about.

~

My father’s elements course through these waters,

mingled with untold souls rendered by nature and distilled with time.

I steep in the essence of man's history

to gin and tonic effect.

I see my future:

I am hers,

when she is ready to reclaim me.

~

I am not yours.

~

A light breeze rolls in my ears.

In the distance,

anglers cast their lures

and loop their lines,

they observe and listen.

They cast again.

Green crabs scurry over foot.

~

I stand in stillness for hours until the tide change.

Small pools expand until subsumed by their maker.

Sand ribs flatten.

I draw back with the shoreline.

A quiet crowd of anglers converge near the beach entrance as the waters rise.

~

I stall in the foreshore:

to search for the steel

to gird me on the path

back to the frenzied mass.

No person should be owned

or erased,

not by mean mortals, at least.

~

My feet sink with apprehension,

in this boggy middle place.

An angler grasps my struggle.

She extends her hand.

I take it.

Together we heave.

I am freed.

I nod in gratitude.

She smiles, “You ok?”

I find my voice:

“Not quite. But I will be.”

~

We walk the path back together:

We are not yours.