I shall go at last to live beside the sea

And leave the inland clamour and its reckless noise. 

I go to gather memories abandoned,

Like children on forgotten streets of cities, 

And gather them to a home of melancholy gladness under the roof of my mind.

I shall sit and listen to the many-throated voice of the sea whispering of ages gone,

Ground to pebble and sand, spewed in the wash, dragged the length of oceans. 

And through the coastline’s millennial course,

Its shifting line the heaving effort of time,

I discern an intent for me, a stone lifted, 

Travelling with many others to be cast into the solace of the deep.

Or should my stone be one taken from some distant shore, 

To be shoved and dragged in the waves’ claws, 

Tumbling in the debris upon a barren beach,

I will care not,

For my life was given and now I take it back,

To wait and listen in my garden by the comfort of the ceaseless waves,

To forget the other fallen stones lying in their landlocked graves.

And when you think on me have you no remorse,

I shall be the oceans’ ending and the oceans’ source.