Hard Lines

If you are on a beach

near the water

and you make a hard line

in the sand,

either by anger

or in principled display,

maybe by impulse

or just to express some feeling,

no matter the claim,

the statement stands firm.

Light over it

gives shadow and character.

There are immediate results.

A symbol is charted.

An action is cast.

Efforts at

incidental state’s evidence

has yielded a cryptic result.

There is a spent feeling

in the air.

It is initially

as if granularly

chiseled in stone,

but over time,

a patient primacy will persist.

For if it were made

very near the water line

then waves,

with the tides encouragement,

will massage

the crispness away,

will soften its stance,

will script a fadedness

away from jaggedness,

will lay a sway

to its vertical faces,

until there are none

with original intent.

And if it were made

well above water’s embrace,

no matter,

for the wind

as consort will come

and dry away

the tears of cohesion

as viscosity

will have left the scene.

And grain by grain,

all will volunteer departure

and no two will remain

as cognition’s stance.

And the same results,

as with the water,

will, in time, occur.

A hard line in the beach sand

has its own forgivingness

to face

as method through time.

Rhythms of simplicity

will apply.

Impressions are felt

and left to remain

but we are as fragile

as that internal beach is real.

Where we swim, walk, and sight,

we also wail, warm, and wonder.

Hard lines give us perspective,

yet we are here in service

towards that grander interior scale

as a grander scheme of momentum

will appear and eventually override.

We are always

at that beach within.

Wind as breath

or water as being

will ultimately mentor,

even if as tears and sighs.

They will provide deliverance

from these hard lines.