Slow the rising, falling sea

Knees wet below

chest above dry

watching waves (counting)

We turn like cowboys in the saddle

reignless but tethered we lie flat

looking right then left

stroke and stroke

which way will it break?

who has position?

I lean back and out

and watch shoulders and head on

a horizontal elevator bob slightly

below, above the line

the spray, the pirouette

And then back in the saddle

I turn and wait in

the slow falling, rising sea

ones and twos making threes

Were we to speak in binary code

perhaps we would be what we think:

the robot, the puppet, Calvin’s clown and Eliot’s straw man.

But story, mystery

endures, secures where numbers battery,

cold, unrecyclable graphite tools its way to the bin.

He spoke beyond binary opening to an end

where His brother found another way home.

Story, mystery and

paradox lead the way to revolution

bloody change on Sunday

or any other day for that matter

Palm Sunday, communion, afikomen: the geld,

silver returned and hung by the neck    

At last the story, the mystery, leaves in leather, and gilded edged history

fades into history- a barking dog across the street fear or flight

a saxophone spiraling down genetic code and fitted parts