Joyous Song

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Jun 5, 2020
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A silent roar affronts the poor
Waves grasp hungry at the shore
And I’ve brought nothing, save myself
Ecliptic feelings that I felt

And hear the weary Titan’s groan
He’s weeping far away from home
Its stops my heart, so alone
So very much, like me

I take a breath and let it go
And make each breath, sure and slow
Breathe in deep, with ebb and flow
And let it fade away

Yet black as coal, and dark as death
Is Neptune’s realm from whence I’ve crept
A loss, I fear I must accept
With mourning soon to come


I wrote this poem long ago as I stood on Myrdal Beach one summer evening. The friend who invited me was searching for sea shells not far from me. I stood alone allowing waves to ebb and flow moving the sand beneath my bare feet as I was deep in bedeviled thoughts.

Exactly why the sea that night brought back a sad memory, I do not know. Guilt plagued me unrelentingly, so that was likely why. To explain, when at teenager I contemplated suicide and then, earlier that same year when I went south, I wrote a story of a Vietnam vet who committed suicide because he could not accept life after the war. Sadly my brother read this and told his friends, “Carol feels just like I do.”

Those feeling were genuine, thus that short story had genuine feelings, that was its power. I wove into it descriptions and details of that vets suffering and I managed to catch something I rarely so catch - my Titan.

My brother read it, felt it, was affirmed by it and used it to justify his decision to take his life. I only found this out after he died. I would also be the one who found him. Thus, here by guilt began and would come back unbidden that night while standing on that beach.

There is a cost to writing using a part of yourself; until then I never understood this; afterward, I will never forget. That story was destroyed and I do not believe I ever quite touch that level of writing again at least until that night.

I choose Neptune, the god of the sea, because to me the sea means sin. I saw myself as creeping from the sinful behavior of wanting to take my own life through writing which would lead the discovery of my talent and then to my brother loosing his life. The loss, my brother, however, I had to accept, because I was a child playing with fire, but still a child and on accepting this, I started to heal and mourning finally came.

Ironically, I had tried to write feelings of his death, over and over again and never came close until I stood with my feet in the surf, one summer evening at Myrdal Beach.