Shedding Layers of Ocean

Robert Lee Jackson


Hatching Eggs

Shedding layers of ocean
I've revealed my crustaceans.
With time we've had
more to remove,
but also more to remember.
Eroding layers of ocean
I've revealed the earth.
It will take forever
to reconstruct
all that was lost in the slide.
Flaking layers of ocean
from my dry skin,
the bones fossilize,
conditioning themselves
for the next burden.
Filling layers of ocean,
the creatures scurry;
I follow them
down the soft beach
toward the predator filled ocean.

Finish(ed)

The gears polish themselves
on each other,
until the mirrored surface
returns, showing dull teeth.
The jaws of the machine
chew oil to water,
while chips and dust
collect in a slow sump.
Our sun hardened skin
touches. In perfect sequence
each rotation meshes
with the next move of a finger.
Time has fabricated
from a die cast block
the meeting figures
within a vast device.

Widening The Straits

Another island girl
drowns in the lagoon.
Her cries are unheard
through the palms and brush
to the village
on the opposite coast.
A reef shark
scouring the hot colored life
that seems like stone
finds more sustenance
to green his eyes
and incarnadine his teeth.
But she won't be consumed
in a martyring drift,
her body decaying
faster than the skirt.
Another island girl
has saved
the shell necked villagers
against the drab of the looming gray.

Interludes of the Treacherous Sea

Once again
I relinquish the helm
to the local pilot
to guide my tanker in
past the tall bridge pillars,
splicing the close channel markers.
Once again
I relinquish control
to the port navigator,
who leapt from the pilot boat
across cold waters,
despite having been crushed before,
in between metal hulls.
He is the part of me
that knows my course,
but keeps it silent in the orders,
and guides the cargo in.
And once again,
as the horizon thickens,
I wonder what the harbor
will hold;
possibly rows of flowers
hanging along a sea-wall,
an endless row
of driftwood bait shops and shacks,
the industrial cranes
lifting payloads to land,
a city with people
I haven't yet known, but might fit among,
the bright-signed bars
that spend all I have earned and held,
or maybe familiarity
in a home, and a language, and a face.
Again,
I trust the seduced pilot
to introduce another port.


Native

Independent lines in sand,
drawn from the principles
of years of parallel commands.
Bridges crumble over channels
of red versus green markers.
A large boat with a luxury cabin,
schools built on religion,
I swam in the pattern
and could always see clearly
the fisherman draining the coast
with commercial nets and float traps.
Tourism was kept wholesome
while my eyes unwrapped the fabric
and lotion failed
to stop the northern burning.
I left, changed address, and forgot magic
in the molding habits; the leaps
over midnight hidden waters,
all the sips, all the gulps;
aches forgotten did teach.
So returns the warmth, the island,
always leeward from the world.

Mythical

She follows the floating islands
on their diverse rainbow currents,
through the stagnant triangles
always standing, and the deep groove
flows, wavering in a rhythmic stance,
always judging the god's glance;
the reed sunken eyes laid
upon the flat Sunday home,
sewing together loose pages
to his lengthening sail, shredding
under the relinquishing winds howling
and fading, as she fake squints her brow,
dispersing clear wet fog
from a shallow virgin green valley,
as logs collect lichen, and 'shrooms
go spirally eaten, existing in grace;
past now, pillars may climb on marble,
but the continuum is too fast and humble.