Ocean's Secrets

Oceans take our secrets
What we don't want to see or smell anymore.
We feel anonymous
We feel clean
When we throw our past away.
It will wash, we think.
It will sink
It will drift far from this shore.
It will disappear.
Maybe the fish with eat our words
Maybe lost or spurned loves
Will help deep-sea feathery green plants grow.
Now and again.
I find myself walking on the wet, hard-packed sand
looking for tears and exotic messages
In the creeping, reaching water
That just misses touching my toes
Sometimes there's something clear and obvious
Like a fingernail or a plastic bag
Through I'll never know for sure
Who threw them away.
Once I found a wedding ring
Uncovered by the receding tide.
I didn't touch it.
I was already married.
Copyright by Viggo Mortensen (1991)
Coincidence of Memory








