From Grey Beret: Ends and Beginnings

Ends and Beginnings


no stopping till the end of the line,
said the driver

worry was asking 
for the worst at that point,
so we dropped all that,
slid down the window and noticed 
a sharp green smell from the rim of  hills:
anticipation of Spring spoken to the air

and the bus was a dagger,
slipped through the heart
of a long-lost town,
the grey plywood window-fronts
now peeling by themselves,
without a new dress of roller paint

and finally, 
the bus stopped by the sea,
and we marched down
to the pebbles together,
past the rotting cranes
and flapping warehouse panels,

and we dipped our hands in the sea,
and we licked the salt water,
clean with abandonment,
and it spoke of beginnings
for the first time in a while