William Burford
CURE
Stroll toward the beach; stroll till distant surf heard yearning,
Sand seen shining, entice your landsman's legs to quicken pace,
Haste to reach and revel in the sea. You will feel the sunlight,
Wide winning whip, write Speed in thick indelible of a winter blood
Shed then by shoulder blades the ebb tide hones to spur your arms
To wings to go with it like Pegasus flown to a sea mystery. Water
-You are one of those would walk on water- shrinks before your toes.
This morn you rose with sunrise, while still near shore the silver
Stomached trout, breakfasting on minnow morsels, twist through
billows,
Flip from crest to frothing crest, and skin of the early swimmer
Thrill with quick slides. When a child you felt a fishbone stick
In your throat which your father nicknanled 'windpipe.'
It
gasped
Past that snagged fish's rib a rasp that could not shake it loose.
It blew the bone to bow vibrations beautiful as waves must raise
Fingering the whale's flank. Pain can be arranged to loose a beauty.
Remembrance, like a piscene fossil quick in waves of shale, quickens
In a shiver of the brain, of a strata chilled so in the morning sea
You see, counting the gills' leaping pulse, the clean surgeon smile
Devilishly as his brilliant forceps did. His smile was once upon a time
An
angel's, one of the sublime Time fouls by tumbling oceans on
cumbersome
Oceans of moments upon, that an instant shift shows rusted to a grin,
And a song that soothed soured to the cackle of a mad man's rhapsody.
The early swimmer would be back to beauty. Back! the bell salt
gnawed
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