once an ocean

Once an Ocean

Ernest, the marine biologist, is walking with me
today my old friend died many ago, but he is in
my thoughts I listen as he tells how this place,
where we walk, used to be the floor of a sea.

Algarve blue sky, evergreen bushes and dry clay
soil and I try to think of myself as a lobster walking
in the seaweed, and the circling eagle a shark, but
a fleeing rabbit breaks the illusion.

So everything disappears, our passing lasts a cosmic
second, all that has been written will be forgotten
new religions will appear they will tell of love, yet
ban or kill those who disagree.

That knowledge is not an excuse to roll over and
do nothing, we have to do our best speak for those
can’t, defend those who have lost their homeland
and try free ourselves of bigotry.

Ernest has gone back to Saragossa to study drifting
seaweeds, and where old track ends my dog sits and
wait for me, she had no heaven to go to, so we both
drift along on my dreams.