More philosophical reflections from my national parks vacation

This is another philosophical/personal development poem whose ideas were generated during my recent vacation to the Pacific Northwest, and specifically to Olympic and Redwood national parks.


BEACHES OF FAITH

Beaches have many sounds.
First, like different snowfalls,
No two beaches sound the same
Under the deadfall of human feet.
At one, the sand screams;
At another, it scrunches.
And that’s just the beach sand,
To say nothing of the different roars
Of breakers and surf on sand and sea stacks.
Dover Beach’s sea of faith
Sounds much different at Olympic or Redwood.
It looks much different, too,
As the gleam of moonset on marine mirrors,
The ocean surge constrained by lurking volcanic headlands,
Brackets questions of ebbing faith within a particular context.
Faith in what? About what? For what? To what end?
The faith of Olympic and Redwood
Is not in, for, or to some transcendentally dead deity.
Rather, it is in a nonmetaphysically eternal recurrence,
That this world, this nature,
Simply IS,
And will be,
But like Heraclitus’ river,
Never will recur the same.
In that, I have faith indeed,
A faith as constant as the ebbing tides’ returning surge,
An Olympian faith for today.