Steve Roberts
INUNDATION
In this split
Second, as I stare from the rocker
At the rollicking Atlantic,
Somewhere on this dizzy, dozed-off planet,
Someone is dying.
Might we call this “the subconscious”?
Off the water’s dull gray surface
A boisterous wind blusters
While insinuating waves curl
In quick and tight.
Inside the enclosed porch’s
Windows where walls would be,
I sip warm and frothy emerald-green Irish coffee
Out of a glass-bottomed mug
Heavy-as-stone
While the young waitress is being shown
The latest technique of opening
More bottles of wine than she could ever
Even imagine drinking
Before the unabiding ocean.
Author’s Comment: I was sitting in a rocker looking at the Atlantic and drinking an Irish coffee. It was a dark and stormy day, and though we know people are dying every second, we are rarely conscious of it. There is the correlation between the removed view of the “enclosed porch” and the limitation of the conscious mind. The waitress was being shown how to open bottles of wine which drew a parallel to “opening” the unconscious. The liquidity of the ocean, my beverage and the wine compounded together. It is also true that the brain is surrounded by fluid.
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