thoughts on the way, before, traveling keelung to hualien by Dean Schabner

here, let’s say,

we begin, seeing

ocean spread, bluegreen motion,

moving within herself under

bright restless clouds, ocean

moving and always still

just where she is, this,

seeing this, it could be,

beginning

or a question,

any question, which is

the start of everything of

imagining an answer

from the drongos perhaps

black, everywhere

all along the way

birds call from wires walls trees

I hear them over

roadwind wild while green silent

mountains commune with the clouds

where do mountains come from,

do leaves feel clouds’

closeness, their caress, and

is it calming,

do they wonder

whether sun will ever

come again

*    *    *

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Dean Schabner has a chapbook, "surf-body," out from Ghost City Press; a collection, "no better place than here," from Atmosphere Press, and has had poems and stories in The Pushcart Prize, The Trouvaille Review, Juniper, River Heron Review, Witness, Northwest Review and others. He lives on the beach in the Rockaways of New York City, and is a body surfer who doesn't mind if a wave takes him and tumbles him once in a while, and he's glad his daughter is that way, too.