Gary LeBel

Andrew Wyeth, “Wind from the Sea,” Tempera, 19″ x 28″, 1947

Two If by Sea

1. Of Wind and Wave

"O eternal sea, tell me of what you whisper"
            Odysseus Elýtis, With What Stones, What Blood, What Iron

The beach is littered with fresh tracks: leaving their secret rooms in the surrounding forest near twilight, deer will have gathered here again beneath The Moon of the Beavers. One easily imagines their white pluming breaths, their fleece being borne out of the cold dark by a snow of moonlight, the poise of stillness the cove encircles, the rippling of wavelets that fill each twitching ear, the large brown eyes that see infinitely more than we do.

I trace their cloven tracks around the curve of shore that glitters with bits of mica in the daylight, each print a seal impressed on deeptime’s letter of peace and unity, a missive that too often goes unread by the self-regarding eye

          like the note warning Caesar as he made his way to the senate house that fatal March morning.

Only the shoreline's pines
bear witness to a yearling's grace
for restive sand forever remakes itself
under the aegis
of wind and wave

Click here for Part 2, “Wind from the Sea”