Ocean Education

author’s note:

“I have sounded the very bass-line of humility.”
                 -- Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I


OCEAN EDUCATION

After thrashing the water
with my fierce swimming
all day--all night
I finally gave up arguing
with the ocean--

for the time being
I would stop searching
for a current to carry me
to a new horizon

and instead
let the waves roll me ashore.

Now in exhaustion, I slop
against this beach stone
with its silent Buddha smile:

the stone knows how the ocean ignored
my stubbornly-held well-calculated plans--
ignored
my screeching, my beseeching--

knows how
the ocean knocked
the bellow from me
(not just once or twice
 but repeatedly)
until I finally completed
another lesson in humility.

The stone tells me,
"You teach yourself well--
  consider this:

"by weakening
  your body and spirit
  you’ve given yourself the opportunity
  to find strength within--
  the opportunity
  to lift yourself back up againv   after another defeat
  and in that way, win."


© 2020, Michael R. Patton
Poet, Heal Thyself: poetry ebook