Tarmac, ocean

Tragedy was never an intention

but it came, cloaked, secretly

shouted from rooftops,

appeared in a heartbeat

telling stories of prides

and falls, ambitions and rebuttals,

the close and the lost, fantasies

of real love and bruised realities.

Tried to settle. Tried to take

readymade steps on a tarmacked path

through a council park where

yellow arrows pointed the way on

and the way out and the grass was shaved;

but yellow arrows missed the new, the wild,

unexplored, dangerous – no mountains to scale,

no rivers to swim or adrenalyne rushes

and their aftermath. Quiet, sedated maybe.

So much risk to stay alive

through the deathful, tolerate

the insufferable, ride waves

in nausea and vertigo and still

choose to be with the ocean,

choose to be the unbearable

ocean in the ordinary, the everyday.