Waves tortured the rocks, ascending
higher and staining more sediment with each surge,
gnawing away at crumbling boulders.

In the depths below, a dolphin dances
buoyantly in the water, occasionally peering
out of the deep blue mountains crashing down.

As cool crisp air breathes
through me, I cast
my eyes out to where the sky greets the ocean.
The beginning of the end of the Earth.

Behind, ruins of a great castle rises
into the heavens.
A light moss climbs
up and around the sides of the great walls.
Who once dwelled in its now broken remnants?
A shipwreck from an ancient voyage lies
somber and unchanged to my east.
Who died?

A fog wades its way across the sky.

Startling me back to reality,
a gypsy man,
Short, with yellowing teeth,
dark oily hair, lying stout upon his head,
asking me to delight in a ride upon his dirty steed.
Only 20 Euro.

Tourists point to my dancer in the water.
The castle is being climbed by a young girl.
Mom is waiting behind a screen,
eager to capture the moment.

But moments are fleeting, and pictures hold no truth.
History becomes a commodity,
but real history is like a forgotten song
an unfinished melody,
echoing in an empty concert hall,
a double bar line in the middle of the stanza.

Who will remember you?
You are not great like a castle nor somber as a shipwreck.
What became of those people? What becomes of you?
Your history. Fleeting.
Your music, though beautiful,
is hushed.

Bury you deep into the earth, I can.
Feel your presence near, I cannot.
How does one recall an existence?
I recall in waves.

Waves surge at me. Waves of unexplained grief.
For a while, the ocean rests, but waves re-emerge,
and I am bobbing in the water.
Troughs and Crests of blue pour unto me,

forcing me to become
your bony hands,
dancing delicately on the ivory keys.
forcing me to remember,
as I pass your empty residence,
humbly nestled
between towering mansions.

But even those hidden rooms,
where your songbooks piled and rose
into the heavens,
begin to escape my cognizance.
I realize many others live in ignorant bliss,

Eventually my hands will tire,
and I will slip under the water.
Though some will remember me,
they too will become less than ruins of a castle,
the stories of our shipwreck to sink
into the dark muddy banks so far from shore,
not even a bird overhead dare to looker-on.