Transition: An Introduction

April is National Poetry Month, which means that I, along with a smattering of friends, will be writing and publishing one poem a day for every day of April. Today is April 1^st.

Transition: An Introduction

In the last moments of his life, Sharif Maripol, felt - with an intensity he could not quite recall having ever felt - the shifts between gravities of his body as the bow of the little wooden motorboat rose and fell over crests of waves. He felt his own imbalance and the tiny altercations his body made (starting in his ear, he remembered with an ironic smile) to try and right himself as the crests kept coming in a perfectly unpredictable rhythm. Through that same organ that determined his sense of balance, he heard the muted sound of heavy wood as it rubbed softly against the water’s top. Beyond that, all he heard was the silence of sunshine, for they had motored far too far from the shore for any seabirds to be coughing around and for the moment at least, no fish, dolphins, or whales, were bouncing around, distracting the thunder from these, the last few moments of Sharif Maripol’s life. He felt the burning tropical sun burying waves of heat into the cracks of his beaten and chapped face. He felt a slight breeze passing through the muddy tatters of what once was a respectable French-tailored suit. He was calm and happy.

He heard a rusty, aggressive click immediately behind his right ear, and just as the calm and happy world erupted in a deafening blast, time ceased to have any real relevance and Sharif’s mind was loosed free at last:

The rising foil of fortune foretold as only the forsaken can

in dreams and fugues and battled tunes, the patterns through the end,

while time and mind form broken lines with craters in the heart

the hopeful raise a rusted sword and rush to play their parts

But I swim in hopelessness, and without fear

I hope for nothing, for nothing is dear

Except the things I cannot hold, except the things I feel

except the things indifferent to me: the source of what is real,

and by the by, and by the way, that awful roar is singing

and by myself, and what the hell, now heaven’s gate is ringing

The body of Sharif Maripol was never found, but neither he, nor anyone else had any particular interest in it having been found, for that which was most important was now free, and in freedom was it terribly beautiful.