Clarity

What does it mean? How can we hope to reach
what this moment is, and can we understand?
Does meaning lie in what we've heard or seen
or why we scratch our names upon the beach
when these, like all such marks, fade back to sand?
Is this the clearness that wipes out where we've been?

We took the train here, paid memory the fare.
The sleepy clack, the passing trees and poles,
described our lives, the ordinary beat
that falls and falls with what we strive to share,
defining single parts connected by their wholes
where minute and immense can sometimes meet.

The tide comes in, the seagulls wheel and call,
these lines lead out. I turn and leave it all.

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