When Daylight Comes

When Daylight Comes

When daylight comes
you roam the crinkled shores
stride out to a beckoning emptiness.
Wednesday’s sun flares up
from the crook of grey hills.
Your footprints weave
the virgin wastes like an aimless drunk,
beetle across this wilderness of rumpled dunes.
The sands are a map
and last night’s other lives
have left their feeble tracks and tiny stories:
claw prints of a bittern
soft paws, a rabbit under moonlight,
stitch marks of a swift predator–
millipede, night hunter on the prowl–
the strutting bold stride of a pheasant.
And here a tiny death–
bumbling epic wanderings
of a sand beetle,  ponderous
and purposeless, speared
by a beak at dawn.
Sunrise scatters golden light.
Frail thing of flesh, you lift
stick arms in supplication
captive to a sky of cirrus charms
eyes raised up
to it’s tousled random beauty.
Might some grace yet come?
Subdued by sea mists
the dawn sun stares,
a tamed red Gorgon’s eye.
You come here sometimes
comforted by seas that measure time.

– Jogyata.

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