The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Miles David Moore

THE MAN WHO HATED OCEANS

They were too big for his blood.
He walked alongside them, resenting
the grit and shell-shards stabbing his feet,
the stink of dead fish, the animal roar
of vast, undrinkable amorphousness,
the waves that first kissed, then slapped, the shore.
He saw absolutely nothing remarkable
about Tinkertoy freighters in the pinpoint distance
or Ken-doll surfers in their death-wish curl.
Staring at calm seas from a balcony
or the turbulent heights of a jet,
he thought them a sop to the cult of romance,
a mirror for the world’s self-regard.

He preferred rivers—or, more accurately, creeks.
He loved—no, not loved; felt comfortable with—
the damming of water in narrow ditches.
Creeks flowed serenely in subdued confinement,
and when they jumped their banks, everyone agreed
they were wrong and bad. They could be diverted
for anybody’s purpose, even his.
This validation buoyed his soul until,
at last, he found his own narrow ditch.


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