ventura beach revisited

                      Freddie in Ventura

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those amber sunsets

never set but hung in mind

resplendent always

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many years before

this beach and all that’s on it

were now, were mine

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time was not what it

now is nor is becoming

each moment stayed whole

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the waves held me fast

while the wind blew permanence

over solid sand

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gulls sat in the sky

as if transfixed or painted

by a maker’s hand

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a kid on a beach

– in the timeless space of life –

that kid’s always now

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freddie omm

ventura, september 2019

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The first of my haiku chains about Ventura beach was published here in December 2014: on ventura beach. I wrote this new one and took the photo while revisiting the beach last week. Here’s a shorter edit of the poem on Instagram.

shoredays, yoredays: seven haiku on a beach

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now, then, soon – shoredays,

wave-lapped hours, wind-spun and warm

like summer kisses

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blown in midwinter

distillated on our lips

blissed out, oh! timeless

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yoredays – flown, but here

with you forever, come spring

and the buds and birds –

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skies drunk on light, blue

till blacked-out, then flopping blank

on a spinning globe

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summerled like myth,

tripping out on dewy toes –

yoredays, yours, mine, theirs,

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the only sure thing

left is love in all our lives,

strewn along the dunes

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days of sun, shoredays –

all transilluminated,

hewn in memory

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