The Prompt: Tunnel Vision—You’ve been given the ability to build a magical tunnel that will quickly and secretly connect your home with the location of your choice — anywhere on Earth. Where’s the other end of your tunnel?

The Tunnel

Wave after wave for watching and sand for walking on—
always in the darkness, just before the dawn.
It’s not the sun I’m looking for or surfing or for fishing.
A flat and quiet walk each morning is what I am wishing.

I exercise by bending to see that special stone
the sea has freshly churned up, just for me alone.
Arrangements of sea weed, coral and a shell
create what is beautiful–not merely what will sell.

All of them are beautiful, exactly where they land—
perfectly arranged as by some artist’s hand.
Is it design or accident? The argument still rages,
removing us from this free place and putting us in cages.

It matters not who made it and matters less the reason.
Believe in God if that’s your thing, but doubting is not treason.
It is enough to have this place that I am drawn back to
winter after winter, to memorize the view.

I fill up all my pockets with sticks and stones and  sand—
a tiny brittle  seahorse carried in my hand.
Gathering my treasures before the sun appears,
for all the sadnesses of life, my payment in arrears.

If I’d a magic tunnel to carry me away
to any place I wished for, for an hour or a day,
the beach is where I’d always go, the choice for me is easy—
before the sun is fully out, it’s shaded and it’s breezy.

My skin is pale and colorless.  It welcomes not the sun.
So when the fiery orb appears, my beach combing is done.
I can retreat onto the porch to ponder and observe
the menu that the day serves up—my visual hors d’oeuvre.

To rearrange the treasures the sea has given me,
to fasten down forever what recently was free.
For art is just our method of sharing what we feel
and trying to communicate the things we know are real.

I am not talented with brush or clay or bronze or wood.
But when I was still tiny, I discovered that I could
rearrange whatever came within my grasp
and make a little tableaux that made my family gasp.

I’d sneak into the bathroom , to the medicine chest
and rearrange the bottles in the way that I found best.
My father would protest in vain to please leave his alone,
for I kept my eye peeled like a mongrel’s on a bone;
and if he moved a bottle or a razor from its place,
extreme agitation was written on my face.

So now that I am grown up and I can freely travel,
I can arrange lovely things in ways that don’t unravel.
I can glue down elements once I rearrange them
so no errant viewer can pick them up and change them.

For Mother Nature’s hand is vast.  She has a billion fingers
for picking up and placing things, but then she never lingers
to insure they stay in place, for this she has no reason.
Those billion fingers rearrange season after season.

Every second, every day, she can continue freeing
all the things she has arranged—it is her reason for being.
But for mortals  with two hands and with less renown
It becomes important to try to pin things down.

And so although my efforts may often seem absurd,
to fasten down each object, to write down every word;
it’s proof here of my being.  Evidence I am.
Part of me an artist, the other part a ham.

I want to be noticed.  Want for you to hear.
Want to be remembered when I’m no longer here.
I want to build a tunnel through poetry or art
so you can visit anytime what once was in my heart.
I may change by tomorrow. I will not always be.
But what I have created might live after me.

 (To see some more of my beachwalk assemblages, please click on this link:  Assemblages)