I woke on the sand where silence breaks like glass,
a splintered dawn wedged beneath my eyelids—
salt stings the scrapes Father left
before the boat and I split company.
Here the sea is a broken record,
grooved with gull-cries and static.
A rust-freckled radio skulks under driftwood;
its knobs spin like orphan planets,
yet all its mouths offer
is hiss, hiss, hiss—
I understand that language.
I build
a citadel of coral and caution,
mortared with muteness.
No print but mine dents the beach;
even the crabs keep respectful distance,
clinking armour like distant cutlery
from a banquet I never attended.
At night the palms clatter,
jointed dolls wound too tight.
I count the cogs in their creaking,
measure how far fear travels
when wind turns the world into engine.
I tell myself
I am the basalt heart of this place,
hard, igneous, immune.
Feelings are flammable;
I bury them deep in the cooled magma
where no match can strike.
If rescue sails
I shall lower the sky like a shutter,
paint SOS backward on the horizon
so no one can read it.
I have learnt: company bruises.
Yet sometimes
a turtle carves slow runes in sand;
moonlight fits my shoulders like borrowed cloth,
and I recall
a room, a lullaby,
someone promising the earth was kind.
The tide leans close,
offering questions shaped like shells.
I tuck them beneath my tongue,
keep them unasked—
a hoard for the day
the basalt cracks
and something green
dares the air.
Bob Lynn | © 2025 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved.
Vox Meditantis 
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