KS Culbreth

The Piers

Those damned waves.
They kept lifting me up
then smashing me
into the barnacled piers.
I tried to move ashore
then the current would drag me out
and those tall thin waves
would lift me up,
smash me against
the piers.

I stopped swimming against them
tried to float with them
but they just picked me up
all the more easily
and dashed me.
My skin lacerated badly.
Bones broken.
My head nearly crushed.
Those damned waves.

I was thrashing then
and my hand hit something
I thought was just more debris
those upon the docks
threw down at me
keeping score.
With a desperate lunge
I grabbed at it.
It was rope.

I looked up at the dock
took another knock
against the barnacled pier
wiped the blood and
salt water from my eyes.
Saw beauty reified, pure, gentle
loving beauty looking down
at me from the dock.
A beam like truth
through all the debris
hurled downward
into the sea.
A beam that saw
the dysfunction of the waves
that corrupted, isolated,
made cold.

I tugged. The rope tugged back.
The next smash against the pier
I started to climb.
Went up as far as I could
until I had to come away
from the pier,
weak hands, hanging
from the rope alone.

It wasn’t cut.
Just let go.
Nothing but those
damned waves
down below.