out there

There were times, at night, late,
when the ocean stretched an unseeable
distance, black and silent, below a sky
that hung high, speckled with
stars that lit, though just a bit, the darkness,
and it was then that he would stop and look and
listen and try to feel the quiet and understand the
shroud. He remembers it like it was
yesterday, and it was, in a fashion. Today, when life teems
with sound and voices and duties and distraction,
he wishes to be back there,
if only for a moment, in the darkness and
stillness, to be surrounded by it, again, and, this
time,
to appreciate it, being a dot
in
the
universe, feeling small but alive. He would mention it to
a friend or a lover, too,
sometimes, was tempted to, but knew that he
could not do it justice, so
he simply thought it and
recalled his
youth.