Freddie in Ventura
*
those amber sunsets
never set but hung in mind
resplendent always
*
many years before
this beach and all that’s on it
were now, were mine
*
time was not what it
now is nor is becoming
each moment stayed whole
*
the waves held me fast
while the wind blew permanence
over solid sand
*
gulls sat in the sky
as if transfixed or painted
by a maker’s hand
*
*
a kid on a beach
– in the timeless space of life –
that kid’s always now
*
**
*
freddie omm
ventura, september 2019
*
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.
About freddie
It is an affecting haiku chain about growing up and memory. It deflects the nostalgia commonly associated with those subjects.
The visual here of the much-trodden beach, with the description: “the wind blew permanence / over solid sand” encapsulates the shifting, delusional permanence of memory.
And the “kid on a beach / – in the timeless space of life – / that kid’s never grown” – could be any of us, caught in “the amber sunsets… resplendent always” of our memories (when they are indeed amber or golden and not embittered).
Thanks for your comments, Verity, I love this subject.
When you remember something clearly, the memory seems fixed, a moment in amber, fixed in time. – But memory does of course have its own vitality and evolves through time, as free from fixity as our experience in present moments.
Beautiful
Thank you, Luisa
Growth in people is usually about development and change.
This haiku chain recognizes this (in its final line), but posits that growth also comes through full immersion in a timeless, changeless moment or experience.
Am I Right?
I think so, Scarlett, and thank you for asking.
This poem is certainly about growth, but it is about more, too – personal identity, time, art.
It is also about being grateful for each and every moment we have!
Thank you, Yu Yan, this also true and good advice.
The crux is here:
“time was not what it
now is nor is becoming
each moment stayed whole“
It is about seizing the moment, the past moment, in all its significance. That “seizing” freezes it, so to speak, in our memory and so in our experience of life.
But of course our felt experience is also composed of a flow and succession of such moments: they are at once in flux, eternal and ageless.
The kid on the beach never grows up:
“a kid on a beach
– in the timeless space of life –
that kid’s never grown“
But the man remembering being the kid can only have grown up by remembering a part of his being as being that kid forever.
Thanks you, Scarlett, for your bright incisive thoughts, I appreciate them much.