Outside

An old man will say, of course,
the ocean was never the ocean
when you were 10 years old,
shivering, determined that summer
to throw your body with the waves
the way the older boys did.

Ocean tries to eat everyone,
but the boys laughed, looked ahead,
and sung themselves along a curl
of water that had no need for them,
and you'd always see their heads
pop back up in wondrous signal
that they lived again and again.

There was the dishwater between,
the big waste of time and space,
before the perfect taking-off place,
blue and rising and urgent as last
words before a nervous firing squad.

In a quick quiet, you cross the grey
water of purposelessness. Back
on the sand is the life you may not see
again...going on fine without you.

Just bobbing. Bobbing. Feet far
off the bottom. Wondering. Someone
says cooly, "Outside." They head out
to meet it. You go. The monster comes.
You swim hard into its wings, its flight,
until you're staring down a building.

And my life was only my life,
with not much left to it now.
"Outside," of course, was never
a word. It's the gong that made me,
maybe, eternal as some dawns.