December withers in its ownership,

It lets the hot breath of March exhale all along this northeast coast.

Winter jackets fall sad and loose upon the floor.

I wander to the beach, the barren coast of

Gray and brown where

Fog looms in the confused, heated winter.

A ceaseless shoreline shrugs off its weight

Into the hungering water.

The pale blue berates it’s eternal victim

As I sit and listen to the seconds splash away in

Each crash. It eats my own breath away.

I am hungry for this ocean to speak to me

Hungry to have the broken shells scream―explain to me 

Why the water rises and the heat of December makes me sweat. I await

Some larger bird of rebirth to rise from winter’s ashes of

Sand and sea glass,

But the killdeer just dance alone upon the shoreline,

Dance with hunger at every bubble in the foam, 

Dance unchanged upon the rising storm of fog, 

Dance like witches as the salty sea boils its steaming fog

As new rebirth squawks from the quick tapping

Of their quick footprints.

I stand and look out, I sink deeper into the wet sands of time, 

And into decay, and into the ocean, and into life itself.

I look upon the Atlantic, 

The endless thing that eats all things, 

its salt infinite and unbound, its domain undaunted.

I hear the fountains of all things crash upon this shoreline, 

and fountains of water rush back in and out

I think of Grandpa’s love of Pete Fountain, 

How the old man smiled at the archaic clarinet 

Swaying in the kitchen through new speakers.

How the old man closed his eyes with subtle, yet old remembered joy

And told me of our ancestors.

Who came across this ocean in a sailboat, 

And watched the condensation drop from giant sails 

Down upon Sicilian foreign tongues in a 

December much colder than the one before me.

The hot breath of winter melts me to my core

As the Atlantic hammers the shoreline

Impatiently breathing, expanding it’s timeless eternity