The Keeper of the Timeless Tide
And silvered waves in endless chorus break,
There dwelt a man whose heart was not his own—
But captured by the sea’s unyielding wake.
This Marin, keeper of the ocean’s tongue,
Whose soul was stitched from threads of salt and breeze,
Would weave the tales the endless tides had sung,
And cradle whispers borne across the seas.
Each dawn he’d stand where sky and water blend,
His gaze a prism catching dawn’s first flame,
As if the horizon’s vastness would send
Knowledge to tether to his calling name.
With weathered hands and eyes like stormwracked glass,
He gathered stories, fragile as a shell,
From drift and foam—these centuries that pass—
Entranced by secrets salt and time would tell.
The ocean’s voice, a timeless lullaby,
Was not but sound—a script etched in his heart;
Of tempests born beneath a sable sky,
Of sailors lost, of journeys torn apart.
Yet, in those depths, there stirred a gentler song—
A murmur held in algal forests deep,
A tale of patience, long-lived and strong,
Beneath where ancient shadows softly sleep.
One eve, when clouds like raven wings conspired
To drape the world in ink and muted gray,
Marin beheld, where twilight fire expired,
A vessel wrecked, a stranger swept astray.
He dragged ashore a broken visage, pale—
A woman cast from phantom seas afar.
Her eyes were locked in some forgotten tale,
A memory mapped like a distant star.
“Who are you, wanderer of the drowned mist?”
His voice, both careful and profound, implored.
She spoke no word, yet by the moonlight kissed,
Her silence in his memory soared.
He named her “Echo,” for she bore the weight
Of stories sealed beneath the ocean floor.
Together by the fireside, thus their fate
Became a chant of lore and metaphor.
Echo’s silent voice, a spectral grace,
Spoke volumes in the language of the night,
Her gaze a mirror glassed with tides’ embrace,
Reflecting depths beyond the ken of sight.
Through nights profuse with waves’ sonorous hymns,
They voyaged far on dreams distilled by foam;
The ocean carved their souls with untamed limbs—
In every spray they glimpsed a path to roam.
Marin’s mind, a vessel vast and slow,
Received the ocean’s mem’ry, dark and bright;
Each tale imprinted like the whispering snow,
An endless script inscribed in drifting light.
A tempest’s rage, a pearl beneath the sand,
A lover’s promise sealed within a shell,
An ancient city swallowed by the land—
All found their place within his remembering well.
Yet still the sea held secret after secret,
Like veins of silver threading starlit streams;
The waves resounded subtle and discreet,
As if to guard their soul’s mysterious dreams.
One night he ventured close to ocean’s face,
Where twilight and the murmurous depths entwined;
Upon that line—the world’s forgotten place—
He met the silence cradled in his mind.
The ocean, poised between the seen and veiled,
Breathed stories wrought as if from ages spun;
Their meaning veiled, their presence unveiled,
Like distant suns eclipsed, then swiftly gone.
Marin felt time dissolve upon that brink,
An endless corridor of dusk and dawn;
And in that hush, the memory did sink—
A tale unfinished, waiting to be drawn.
Hours waned; the tide withdrew and left behind,
The whisper of a promise dim and fair;
The sea had parted with the weight of mind,
Inviting still the soul to dare and care.
Marin pondered on the shore’s cold sweep,
Where sea and sky unceasingly converse,
And knew the stories were alive, asleep—
Awaiting telling in their silent verse.
“Are stories bound to earth, or do they roam
Like drifting mist that sunlight fails to cage?
Must memory be shackled unto home,
Or does it dance upon the ocean’s stage?”
He spoke these words aloud to wind and wave,
His voice as fragile as the morning dew;
Yet in that instant, time itself did save
The fleeting truth he sought: a path anew.
For Nature’s script is never sharply closed,
Nor is the tale confined to mortal grasp;
The sea, whose breath upon the world is posed,
Invites the soul to loosen tight its clasp.
Marin, the sentinel of ocean’s lore,
Knew now the voyage of the heart must roam—
Forever seeking, ever craving more—
To find that place which all belong: their home.
As dawn broke softly on the glimmering tide,
He watched the horizon melt in amber fire;
No end was writ upon the seaward side,
No final word to quell the heart’s desire.
The Keeper of the Timeless Tide remained,
A figure etched against a waking blue,
Embracing all the tales the sea contained—
And those yet whispered in the gathering dew.
Thus, on that shore where ocean’s fingers reach,
Marin stands sentinel of time’s refrain;
His story woven with the waves that teach
Of memory’s ebb, and nature’s boundless reign—
An open book upon the water’s face,
Ink ever flowing in its fluid range;
And though the tales may shift and leave no trace,
The quest endures, unbroken and unchanged.
