"I Heard God's Word Along the Sea"

Alexis's "Prayer for the Sea Dwellers" reminded me about this piece I wrote several years ago after a vacation on the Gulf Coast in Florida.  The imagery in this poem washes over me whenever I read it, and after last summer's oil spill, I am much more aware that we must never again take sugar-white beaches for granted!

   I Heard God’s Word Along the Sea

By David Pulling
(Composed along the Gulf of Mexico at Navarre Beach, Florida in summer 2007)

Pity on narrow men
who canonize God’s Word,
confined in sacred books
composed by ancient hands.

For I heard God’s word lately
along the sea
in noisy surf:
Driven waves
swelling,
rolling,
foaming,
pounding shoreward,
Thundered by strident breeze
from dusk
to dawn
high tide and low
and dusk again
and then
throughout the night.

Wave upon wave,
God declaring in the surf along the sea,
unmistakably,
“I am.”

 So I closed my eyes in the darkened evening,
listening carefully for more:

 “Like the sea dancing on moonbeams before you
As far as the horizon beyond your imagination,
I am greater than your knowing.
Seek me anyway
and know that I am.”

 And so,

I seek.
I long.
I praise.
I trust,
because I hear your Word,
drawing me to Your voice
in the noisy, wind-driven surf along the sea.

For all that I am not, You are.