Poetry of Issue #7        Page 24

One Day Years Ago

When someone said that we, or you, or I
were made in His image, this someone did
not mean a simulacrum of, well, Him;
rather, an idea He entertained
that entertained Him, one day, years ago

as a child might make a castle of the sand
on a beach and watch it, or not watch it, go;
or an emperor build a city; an artist
or architect, a masterpiece; a thinker,
scribbles of dreamt-on verse, from time to Time.

Of course, with stanzas, verse becomes a house
of rooms, and with a book of verse, a city;
with several books, an empire might be born,
far-sprawling, then forgotten. That is why

I loved discovering on the beach, one day
years ago, the old man who told me he
had been a poet, and loved helping him
concoct a castle and watch the gentle waves
of a lazy rising afternoon tide wash
it over so it glistened in the foam
until, by dusk, all three of us were gone.

I now wish I had asked the man his name
so that today I might track down a volume
of him, and images he had one day
years ago, worthy of creation, then.

The thought of him still haunts me as an im-
age, though, of the sands at St. Augustine,
where I played in the sand, once, years ago:
particularly when I’m on a foam-
washed beach, with children playing, some old man,
and me, and not a castle’s to be seen,
and the gentle rote makes every sand-grain

  James B. Nicola