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Rod on Maui, August 2003. Photo by John Scoggins.
©2003 by Stanyan Entertainment.

A Thought for Today

Optimism is the forehead of beauty.

WHITEBAIT

The birds went looking
all the afternoon
for what whitebait
the fishermen had left
                behind.
I glanced up too
half expecting some brown body
to come slowly down the sand.
What better way to waste my time
than in dreams of glory?

Many did
and many do
come down the beach.
Running, strutting,
       sauntering,
diving in the water
sliding in the sand.
Surely one will stop
                     and look.

Take your time
brown-bodied strangers
I've more hours
than there are stones
along the coastline.

Impatience has been
                 till now
an overriding trouble
         in my life
but I'll not be
         impatient any more.
The sun calmed me,
charmed me into waiting.
I pace myself
the way the sea birds do.

Patrick's coming
in the morning
bringing brine
       and whitebait
so that we can
go out fishing too.

I do not expect
the boys of boredom
to come barging, bolting
        down the sand.
I would rather they moved
              slowly
so that I can search them out.

I'd not wish to see
the girls of summer
parading past me
in a pageant.
Let them file by single file
giving this one man
the chance to twice them over
not look one time, then away.

Surely
as this summer starts
there is mermaid, merman
                somewhere
who will walk or wander by
causing me to have a cause,
a purpose for the year
                             upcoming.

If not I have
the mother ocean still
but making love to relatives
                 is not as full
and all fulfilling
as being filled by strangers
                 or filling up
a proper strangers arms.

- from "The Sea Around Me," 1977

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ROD M