Salt Water Dreams

Unlooked for and unreal the waves come in

Softly--coolly--caressing reality

The ocean needs no herald no gull

Cries upon the beeze nor does any obelisk

Break the horizon to mar the grandeur

and simplicity

The Florida that is and was skips and dances

Through my thoughts like the moonlight path

Skating from the cloudy mystery hiding

The horizon all the way to my submerged feet

Florida like a diamond and a flame

From your lips and living mind was wild

And sensual

A beauty shining through you like

The coming of a vision

This was your beauty Florida lover

Whose flesh I have known with

The lust of smoky abandon

But the Florida that is now--that one finds me alone

Upon this beach of shattered sand so soft

That the pieces of shells seem a wonder

An atavism

The receding waves pass through and

Disappear with the softest hiss

So the harshness of the past is sieved

And comes to nothing--my thoughts

They are nothing

tomorrow a creature of the world

a reality of metal and jet fuel will take

me back to the Midwest--to the solid

sea of the plains which knows no caprice

And the Florida that will be?

She is not the gentle sussurations which

Perhaps I could find at home in the rustling wheat

Nor is she the savage beauty

Which even the Illinois plow horse has on a cool

Summer's morning prancing and snorting at the sunrise

No my love

The Florida that will be is unique to her and you

And lives in the memory of salt water

That creeps between my lips and threads

Its tang along my tongue to kiss my throat

Lingering

Salt water that disappears and leaves the finest

Rime of white wrapped about each hair and

Wrapped as well about the misty tendrils of my thoughts

The touch that is barely felt--that

Is the touch that is remembered longest

And with the most desire...

So look for me in salt water dreams

If look for me you will

And perhaps our hands shall brush against

One another far out--twilight

Above the ageless sea

Christopher J. Cramer

May 1985