Journal Poem (Sad)
By Juliet A. Paine
Published 1 January 2021
I drive to the sea.
Thinking of John Berryman,
Jeff Buckley, Virginia Woolf.
What is it about water?
Today has wrung
everything
out of me.
The sea is surreal
blue - unbroken by
houses and roads.
In summer, I only
have a plastic sea breeze
blowing in through the air-cooler
and the constant rush
of cars in streets
race like waves
to home shores.
At night when I can't sleep,
white horses pant
at the edge of
beaches and sunsets.
But in suburbia,
I have to make do
with low volume radio static,
the electric sound of ocean wash.
Today I'm here,
soothed with the ease
of a blue valium on
my eye's tongue.