One Hundred Four Steps

Gerald A. Frank

One hundred four steps descend from

The pastured bluff on Central Avenue

To the beach by the yacht club below.

 

I pause on a rickety landing to survey

The wide ribbon of beach that buffers

Between the scintillating waters and the treed

And shadowed slopes of the eastward facing bluff.

The beach sand holds apart my vital spirits.

At the end of your life will you too feel that you have lived

But one long day? You rose in the predawn to observe

The epiphany of the sun …

As I walk back from the shore,

I notice the sand that blows across the roadway,

Back and forth, the endless reflux of experience.

 

Long, I reflect, are the sacrifices made

to achieve connection, only to find that

when we are done, and the lamb is burnt

on the altar of the sunset’s demurral,

ash is all that remains to eat.

 

I pause in my ascent on a landing,

not to contemplate again

the littoral magisterium. No,

I pause but to catch my breath.