Where I Will Throw Sticks and Rocks in the Waves

I go, then,
to enjoy one of those under-the-evening-
out-of-the-exhausted-daylight-hours moments.
Here is a freshly laid table of
half-eaten desserts and nameless cups of coffee
with the streams of
night flowing toward us
like clouds of sawdust,
with a streamlined echo of animal sounds with tedious edges.
With the darkening dark,
it is an enhanced evening,
an overwhelming experience,
it is a table of love
greater than the daylight hours.
Oh, how I long to ask what it is
that ties our streams
to the virtual world,
that temporary visit.
All the hours,
in they come, out they go,
All the hours.
So I go to enjoy one of those dreams in the evening,
the warmer hours of night,
to this selfsame place wherein is a freshly laid table of
cups of coffee and panels of bread and literature and la-la-la-ing
streaming into an irreplaceable night.
This is the world,
this, this the setting of shops and airports,
this world of words and people and trees,
this trying stream of animal sounds
beyond the table, this indispensable, tedious
cold cloud of sounds.
This table that sits before the growing darkness,
It is an enhancement of our evening.
Yet in the end,
this is not a lasting hour.
We are but experiencing a
stream leading to a joy
beyond all manner of daylight hours.
Oh, how the evening
of these temporal worlds
lengthen;
how the hours prolong
these temporary visits.
Oh, how I long for forever docks
where I will always throw sticks and rocks
in the rick-rocking waves.

Ben Plunkett
Latest posts by Ben Plunkett (see all)

Ben Plunkett

Greetings from the booming metropolis that is Pleasant View, Tennessee. I am a man of constant spiritual highs and spiritual lows. I pray that I serve God at my highest even when I am lowest.

7 thoughts on “Where I Will Throw Sticks and Rocks in the Waves

  • October 29, 2018 at 12:03 pm
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    I love this Ben! I love the ending:

    Oh, how I long for forever docks
    where I will always throw sticks and rocks
    in the rick-rocking waves.

    Just beautiful.

    Reply
    • October 29, 2018 at 9:54 pm
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      Thanks, Phill!

      Reply
  • October 31, 2018 at 8:34 am
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    As always, good work, Ben. As someone wrote “the poet in your soul” has to come out, and it does!

    Reply
  • March 1, 2019 at 9:20 am
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    Ben, I keep coming back to this poem. I love it. I think it’s one of the best you have written for REO. The imagery is just so beautiful – there is a longing that winds its way through the whole thing.

    Reply
  • March 1, 2019 at 11:29 am
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    Thanks, Phill!

    Reply
  • December 9, 2020 at 12:24 pm
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    So good to read this again. Ben, “being dead, yet speaketh.” And yet he is more alive than any of us who still remain.

    Reply
  • December 9, 2022 at 10:45 am
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    Always good to read what Ben wrote. He inspired us all.

    Reply

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