Beachcombing

Beachcombing on a Sunday Morning in Japan, November, 2012

Today I found a monkey skull
Washed up on the beach

Rolled in the black sand surf
With the sparkling stones

And wrenched up seaweed tossed
With whispering shells 

Fresh, not yet picked pristine,
And young, the pinkish teeth

Not yet stained or chipped
I picked it up, like a doll’s head

A girl’s breast, cupped in my palm,
Golf ball gapes where eyes recently

Flickered and darted at birds and butterflies
And rippling leaves -

I wonder if she fell
Was she washed to a river and drowned?

What did she see as she slipped
Teetering out on her own?

Her mother’s flashed alarm?
Too late, gone, out of reach?

I often wander this beach
Looking for shells and driftwood,
Rounded stones and beach glass
Plastic toy figures lost
Sanded over by children’s feet,

And translucent coloured lighters dropped or thrown
 – bird bones –

But the head dome of a fellow primate
Whose non-eyes feign surprise or open wonder
Held here in my hand, rescued
From the seething washback waves,

The obscure deep,
Pulses a primal button marked care for me,
For this needy trusting child

I wonder what they make of me, the locals
Always there, always alone,
Strolling
What’s he doing now? What’s he got?
– chotto hen - weird gaijin -
I pass a cluster of them, or us
The 30-something son, the local wife,
The white-haired grand father
Come to see his offspring sprung
This side of the planet,
Clearly his first time
The brand-new thick cords,
The pocketed hands, slightly raised chin,
The air of nonchalant bewilderment 

Not quite concealed, trying to take it in,
To accept, to understand why
His son is rooting in such a foreign land

And there an office Dad plays beach ball
With his nippers,
His wife sun-dozing 
And there a pair of Tokyo escapees
Earnestly boil a kettle for tea

Wrapped up like sherpas
Huddled by their flapping tent 

And everywhere the shapely wetsuits,
Cheerfully come to surf,
Bobbing half in hope and fear
On their expectant boards,
Like a rodeo, gazing out to sea -

Today the waves are crashing in
Bright sunshine spray

Roaring, racing, long-travelled sea miles
Night and day, for this,

their last climactic glory
- then broken, defeated
Spent by grains of sand -

My beach – I know her well –
Where her beaten rocks are lurking
Her suffering curves
Every day she’s little changed 
Typhoon-shifted, fresh detritus strewn -
And though we’ve spun through the universe
She’s still here, the same
Her breathing heartbeat soothes me
While I’m lost in the newness of now

In the need to simply be
with the wind and the waves
And the monkey skull

Back home, in minutes, and the TV screen is full

Of more dead in Palestine, more dead in Kabul