The Protocols of Resistance

THE PROTOCOLS OF RESISTANCE

The Wind is a living god out on the open sea.

She tears at your form, pulls you out of your shoes,
and rips at what you used to call strength,
redefining how you walk, stand, lean, or work,
schooling in you in the protocols of resistance,
eternally unyielding
and primal in her refusal to be coerced or countered.

Ocean spray can hit like buckshot
when she whips it into your face,
trillions of salted drops, just above freezing,
swarming like bees at the speed of dark;
and the ones that hit sting worse.

The world is a binary thing, oceans below, wind above -
and what lies below us is a mystery more than a platform.

But the wind that lives just above the waves
is a binary again, both the gentle lover of calm skies
and the lash of her biting, storm-fueled kiss.

A man cannot stand upon a ship at sea
without growing up,
a boy becoming a man because a man is needed,
a man becoming a sailor
because the sea will accept no less,
and the wind promises
to kiss each one.

“He went to sea in a thimble of poetry.”- Poet Warning, Jim Harrison

©2014 Christopher Reilley

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