Ode

        Let me offer this image as an ode: 

Small boys, scaling black rocks through the grit 

of sand in coastal wind. 

        We sat in golden beach-grass and the rust

coloured freighters carried their containers 

of whiskey and petroleum to the Netherlands. 

        Nothing much. The chrome chassis 

of common crabs, small lives in the rock-pools,

wheeling, purple starlight in the bodies of jellyfish.     

        We were very young, and the very young 

rarely know what the future, scouring like a rough sea,  

will render soft; will make seem precious. 

        No way to know: tomorrow’s nostalgia. 

What will drown, and what will carry us. No way 

to know which moment is a raft and which a stone.    

        Just as the builder, while building, 

can’t tell how the boat will tack 

differently with each new wind.