Depths

Once more home is a strange place: by the ocean a

big house now, and the small houses are memories,

once live images, vacant

thoughts here, sinking and vanishing.

Rough sea now on the shore thundering brokenly

draws back stones with a roar out into quiet and

far depths, darkly to lie there

years, years—there not a sound from them.

New waves out of the night's mist and obscurity

lunge up high on the beach, spending their energy,

each wave angrily dying,

all shapes endlessly altering,

yet out there in the depths nothing is modified.

Earthquakes won't even move—no, nor the hurricane—

one stone there, nor a glance of

sun's light stir its identity.

Richard Thomas Moore was an American poet, performer, novelist, essayist, teacher, philosopher, mathematician and scholar. One of the foremost American writers of his era, he died on November 8, 2009. Richard was one of the first "name" poets to be published by The HyperTexts, and he was and will always remain one of our most important contributors. He will be greatly missed and always remembered for his considerable accomplishments, especially in the light of the obstacles he had to overcome in order to become a man of letters: dyslexia, a very difficult childhood, being a thinking man in an irrational world, and knees so bad he had trouble assuming the lotus position (and yet he could still stand on his head in his eighties!).