Ripples

Life might be a single voyage

Across an ocean filled with waves

That shake in journeys, ignoring buoys

And end upon a land that saves

My soul can stay afloat so long

To keep but one breath ahead

And sinking may seem to be so wrong

But being alive is merely a paddle from dead

If all we know is in the sails

That stretch and challenge in a bow

And when our dreams do nothing but fail

We might accept what is as just so

We can wish, and we can hope

To be more than a drop in the sea

But can we bear, or even cope

If there’s nothing else that we can be?

A single drop pushes ripples wide

With no other place that they can go

Than to follow along a moonlit tide

And finish on the grounds we know

To move just one single grain of sand

Might pave the way for future untold

And we may not yet understand

How youthful ripples can grow comfortably old

But can we find an inner release,

If we’re not an ocean, a sea, or lake,

Or even a drop that drips in any of these

By some cruel and fateful mistake?

I don’t mind,

Because

I’d rather be a thousand ripples

Or even just the one

Than a single drop in a dreary abyss

Drowned, and forever gone.

CW