Churning boiling splashing swirling air infused white
Caps glistening rumbling aft forces propelling
Vibrations blue deep blue cut angry and disturbed
Frothing mad a paleness flat rising and falling
This highway left behind its visibility
Disintegrating into nets of sea froth whom
Will ever travel forth this same path of water
No one knows for sure thick panels of glass frosted
Panes solid immovable hurricane force wind
Resistant slow sways and sprays lines of light brown sea
Matter cutting paths toward the tyrannical
Wake water blown apart formation scattered as
Far as the eye can see a long flat line even
Our relentless trail traverses only about
Half this visible distance before being lost
Swallowed up forever nothing lasting and all
Just passing into angled panes stained by streaks of
Ocean salt and ship cleansers while brisk breezes and
A swelling a rising a reclamation to
Reclaim that which was lost just momentarily
Melded back together that volume of sea split
Apart by an imposing bulk a bow so fixed
Rudely separated by revelers travelers
In a steel hull shell of a structure determined
Disturbed yet transfixed by this hypnotic process
Of PEACE making to regain a semblance of its
Stolid demeanor to permit man’s steel hard shelled
Device to pass through sea foam with no objections
With no outwardly objections other than this
Dissipating sea foam trail this dissipation
This missive sea foam trail that only the sparse inhabitants
Immediately ABOVE and below might care to read.
Gary Edward Geraci
This poem is conceived in a form of writing known as “stream-of-consciousness” and was compiled during our recent vacation on board a commercial cruise liner named “Freedom”. My wife’s silhouette appears in the title graphic. The words flow freely, are captured, largely unedited, and are then organized; here into predominant 12 syllable, non rhyming lines with no attention to rhythm, feet, or meter and in all, taking eight stanzas. The fun part comes next in the interpretation: In stanza 1 we find ourselves at the rear of the vessel, the aft, and in full view of “angry” seas or is it just an angry wake? This divinely ordained PEACE (capitalization in my poetry always equates to the divine) is temporarily disturbed by a human endeavor here, the use of a manmade “device” (denoting relative smallness) for idleness by a good many, to cut a vanishing “highway” of “revelers,” perhaps too distracted in the piling of pleasures and sensations (the “light brown sea matter”) to see clearly, impeded by “frosted” and “stained” “panes.” But the “stolid demeanor” of the sea, a metaphor for the unchanging mercy of the Holy Church and her Sacraments and the redeeming graces, “brisk breezes”, of the Holy Spirit, are acting to reclaim sinners to Christ. The sea quickly and patiently repairs herself, “melded back together”, with both earth and God as witness to those (even if only a few “sparse inhabitants”) who’d be brave enough to repent and claim themselves as unceasing Christian soldiers of this, His eternal Kingdom. We had a lovely vacation by the way, especially meeting the hardworking, international staff that often go for months without being at home with their families or attending church services.
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