I Cannot Be

Everything I know about being a man I learned from the mountains.

From late nights spent in sleeping bags on rocky hillsides,

writhing, while earth's jagged edges jammed themselves into

the softest corners of my body.

In the morning, Dad would ask how I slept,

I'd lie and shout "Great!"

silently hoping sacrifice would make my soft spots

craggy and rough, like slate or slag.

I'd stand, awestruck, in the shadows of titans,

swallowed by their legacy,

marveling at their unyielding, unforgiving, truth.

Mountains, while stern and cold,

are steadfast and reliable.

At the very least I know that when I fall asleep at the foot of a mountain,

it will be there, same as always, when I wake up.

Everything I know about love I learned from the beach,

from forgiving sands ruled by the sea.

The ground here is soft and inviting.

The beach welcomes all strangers to its shores,

and it makes room for every part of me. 

At night, the tide rises and sweeps away the sand.

When the contours of my body are washed out to sea,

the sand still waits, supple and suggestible,

to enfold me in a surface both alien and familiar.

The beach dares me to dwell here,

promising me a permanent place on its shores,

but sandcastles crumble.

The beach is always at the mercy of the sea.

There is a reason that the mountains and the beach rarely meet,

no polarity can endure its opposite for long.

Yet, here I stand, composed of two poles,

daily they grind against each other

while I strain to avoid the atomic repercussions of their inevitable split.

Growth is friction and fractures.

What is sand? If not the shattered remnants of the mountainside?

What is the mountain? If not grains and gravel subjected

to the metamorphic touch of heat and pressure and time?