WAITING FOR THE PERFECT WAVE

Above: a picture of my father taken on super-8 movie film in the 1970s.  Perhaps this explains the origins of the visual metaphor in the poem?  I had the old cine-film recently transferred into digital medium with many old images greeting me that I had not seen since the early 80s.  Watching them after all this time evoked a bitter-sweet reaction as you would expect with many people recalled on film who are no more or utterly changed beyond recognition. This also applies to locations and to an extent, a way of life and British culture.

This is from a short-collection of poems called "Waiting for the Perfect Wave."

Endings are usually sad events in our lives whether it is a parting through distance, through a break-up or the ultimate parting in the death of someone close to us.  At these times we all rely on systems to rationalise or to at least cope with these partings.  Break-ups which leave animosity and regret can be equally traumatic.  We all love in different ways and so it is only natural to assume that we all grieve differently.  Grief and guilt (are they not twins?) can stay with us for a very long time and perhaps they never really leave us but re-emerge at the most unexpected of times.  This brings to mind the lines from Tennyson's "Tears Idle Tears":

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,

In my case, when there is loss I return to a recurring image.  It is usually a beach, it is a sunny, blinding day and the person I love is always leaving while I am motionless and unable to move.  The beach is generic although there are people there but I do not register them in detail as I am focused on the person leaving.  They always walk across the beach towards the sea.  They turn and almost bear a look of sad-resignation on their faces that says, that although it is upsetting that we must part, it is also necessary.  The world moves on and parting is as important as meeting.  Perhaps they wish me to intervene, to rush to them and to stop them from leaving but I am passive bystander unable to change the inevitable, the pre-destined. Throughout this scene almost like a spectator at a cinema who can engage on an emotional level but cannot change the event unfolding before them.  There is frustration but also a resignation.  The person enters the sea and succumbs to its embrace.

A parting is an end but also a beginning for both people, even I would hope, at times when we lose a person very dear to us through death.  However, it does not take away the immediate sense of loss and the terrible grief and guilt that befriends us for such a long time afterwards.

Waiting For the Perfect Wave

This is how it always ends.

Unravelling before me,

A shimmering sea of  super 8 hyper-real intensity,

At intervals in symmetry,

Migraine dots and flecks and cracks,  

Appear and disappear,

Background to foreground flickers,

Dots and spots splat within a

Perforated frame.

I was told never to take pictures,

Facing the sun,

But that is where I am forced to focus,

Exposed beyond all decency,

I have no choice,

For this thought film recurs in spools,

From time to tide,

The smoothest sand sifts through this scene,

Measuring time like strata sifting,

Through my time-lapsed life,

My focus deep, deep with all regret,

Tears my inner eyelids,

Squints for some perspective,

All is bleary and blurred.

The gulls cry to greet the black rigged sails,

The anguish of the Aegean father breaks,

Stone upon stone this foreign shore,

Over the tide's brittle roar,

A scream that cannot be suppressed,

I've been here before,

To this visual metaphor,

Shades shuffle slowly across the sands,

Out of reach of recognition for,

They are not important,

All that matters,

The shape in the centre,

Slightly out of focus,

At first,

Their blurred back always to me,

Their goal, the unfathomable sea,

And the cold embrace,

And here I sense,

Their life delineated by the foam's silent line,

The border territory of some unspeakable kingdom,

And then they turn,

You turn,

(Half turning  stare at me),

A look as distant as the sea,

Rossetti sad or,

An Annabel Lee,

Sometimes you sadly  smile then turn away,

To face your predestination,

Returning to the wombs’ black tomb,

Evolution in reverse,

The tide sweeps back and forth.

Sometimes you frown,

Sometimes pensive, like some unbirthed sigh,

Of those that know we are born only to die.

Shoulder high and water deep into the ebb and flow,

That takes you onwards on your course,

Deeper by depths and deeper by distance,

While I rigid stare,

Bystander like, a camera rooted,

Recording through a misting lens,

Partaking in passivity.

Powerless to force your stay,

You wade on further into the blinding light,

The shades oblivious in their play,

Or thoughts,

My eyes follow in your wake,

Until you are no more.  Sometimes the sound of

Rolling film, the tail end fin,

Of white screen, the scream of wild-abandoned film,

Ends this final scene.

So went my father,

So went dear friends so deeply loved,

So went old loves deeply more than friends,

All to meet their ends,

On currents I shall never chart or understand,

Waiting for the perfect wave my hand,

And the salt taste rising in my mouth.

(c) Stephen Evans 2014