Ocean Song
Paul eases into the driveway
Then kills the engine
Sitting for a spell, staring out the windshield
Down the hood to the stalled garage door
"Nothing ever works around here" He says to himself
The ignition births the keys into his hands
He opens the door and the world feels suddenly different
He senses something terrible awaiting him, a loose thread, a worsening
In that moment he turns to the sky
He notices it is darker now than it used to be
It is darker now at this hour, than it was last week
Then within or beyond himself
A voice more primal, is urging him, to go, to run
Across the loose brick he propels himself toward the evening greeting
But his inability to shake the warning sees him grinding his teeth
Paul turns to his right
Tracing the unkempt bushes aligning the house and the beds cracking beneath
Reaching over to uncouple the latch
Sweat forms on his brow and the back of his neck and years of servitude are at last present
He can feel them in his bones
Paul is overwhelmed with the need to cry
To crumple down to his knees and release
But pride gives him a shove, nursing him across the muddled, neglected lawn
He inhales through his nose, thinks, "There is so much more to be done"
Then suddenly stopped in his tracks, by his youngest child
Telling his father: to go, to run
He explodes through the backyard like he's shot out of a gun
Clearing the fence in one leap
Landing in a heap in the alley between the neighboring houses
Body broken by nothing, he falls
Knocking over trashcans as he makes his way
Sprinting like some wild animal
A blur beneath the streetlamps
Overhead, a terror-scream
Everything he has is within him
His shoes come from off his feet and shadow him for several yards
Ghost of what he was, desperate to keep up until gone
Now the road, punching upward, into his soft, naked feet
He is never-knowing, never again. Forever flowing
No more waiting, his muscles burn
Deciding to run until he can run no more
To find everything he can find
To know, to see, for himself, if there is an ocean beyond the waves
Writer/s: Alexis Stephen Marshall, Nicholas Andrew Sadler, Jonathan Alan Syverson, Samuel Morehouse Walker
