I wrote this poem years ago, and tonight I was looking at it and made a few changes. I don’t think it made sense before. It still might not make sense, but that’s okay. In the original I talked about nine stories in the world, but Google tells me there are seven basic plots, so I have changed that too. I have been moving and I have found a lot of poems like this – fragments of things. My favourite line in The Wasteland is “These fragments I have shored against my ruins”, and this poem is one of my fragments for the ruins.
There are only seven stories in this world. That
train made from shells you keep to
sing to you—you think like
the ocean whispers time to the
breaking cliffs and the blurring beaches—
sings the same seven stories they play on the TV.
In the evening, longing presses
against chambers of ghosts in your chest, who sing
hush, hush, like the sea.
There are only seven stories in this world; but
the ocean with each wave touches the land
again for the first time, again.
And the taste of salt on skin no wave no ghost can sing.
Ghosts and ashes 