Ocean Manifesto
Oh, for too long…
Have I stood in the same old ground…
Watching the world…
Spin round and round…
Too much of the world left to see…
It, after all, was made just for me, yeah…
Ah, what a shame it would be…
Too let it all go sight unseen…
I have driven endless miles…
But always in circles in the same old streets…
Precious few not part of…
These routes of mine which mindlessly repeat…
Not since youth, in my family’s tow…
Have I walked outside the boundaries that I know…
Having enslaved myself so long ago…
To a life that did not let me grow…
Ah, but the ocean…
Now it calls to me…
Ah, baby, the ocean…
It calls to me…
I need to touch the redwood trees…
Before I grow old and succumb to disease…
I need to stand in the desert at night…
Before I stop raging against the dying of the light…
I need to stand in the canyons of the cities…
At night, the lights, oh they all burn so pretty…
On the people in their aquariums…
Stacked so high… so high…
All these things I must and will see…
But my pilgrimage, it will not be complete…
Until I stand on some lonely beach…
With the waters licking at my feet…
I’ll stand where I did in the britches of a child…
And watch the waves dragged toward me…
Raging… and wild…
As the sun sinks low…
Relative to my view…
In the hidden clockworks…
To which we are given only clues…
I need to feel the ocean…
Wash away my sins…
Swim out to my chest…
And brave the sharks within…
I need to feel the waters…
Tingle up my spine…
Then, and only then…
Can I deem myself as doing fine…
And with arms outstretched…
And with baited breath…
Let the waters crash over me…
And with the past behind…
Having paid all fines…
Oh, let the waters crash over me…
jonvalley.com 