Footprints In The Sand

I went out walking this morning,
alone,
past the domes wherein prayerful petitioners lay prostrate absent
   the distractions of house and home,
eulogies and laments mingled in the surf with hints
   that the devil's meddling had been overthrown,
ghosts moaned in the deep begging to be released,
but it was not up to me sifting through the sand in my bare feet
   to set their grumbling sorrows free,
a ball of gas and heat rose slowly in the far east painting the coast
   in hazy orange tones,
I walked on past cackling gulls and offered back my own sweet song,
notes from my guts bled past my tongue into the heavens
   thrown from my lips to flip o'er the surf rising ever upward like a vocal cyclone,

a drunkard eyed me from his cardboard box home,
sand in his beard and his eyes set with fear,
I steered neatly around his mound of the things life throws out
   only to hear from behind me sounds from his gruff hound's mouth:

"excuse me, kind sir, got anything you'd like to give out?"

he wasn't loud,
only a whisper,
an anti-shout,
vowels crowded with disuse and a tongue long abused by foul liquors
   allowed into that toothless pouch,
I crouched down next to his abode, stole a glance at the trash that flowed
   from his comely chateau to the open sea below,

"tell you what," I spoke, "you free them lost souls out there in that moat
   and I'll give you anything you can manage to ask for from that ol' tattered throat."

he sobbed then, for he knew this to be so: that bums to not float,
they sink like stones,
if he were to attempt to bob like a shrimp
   his own life would be forfeit,

I touched his gentle head and said, "weeds spread like fire, my friend,
do not lay your bed down with the dead,
here's a dollar,
don't spend it all on bread."

TA