There’s something ancient about the ocean—something that doesn’t just move, but remembers. In Ocean, Robinson Jeffers writes the sea as if it were a living force—wise, enduring, and untouched by the fragile weight of human emotion. It doesn’t mourn. It doesn’t waver. It simply is.
Today’s prompt asked us to give voice to something that cannot speak—and for me, there was never a question what that would be.
The ocean didn’t just speak to me—it freed me.
Standing off the coast of Myrtle Beach, I felt something I hadn’t felt in over twenty years. No noise. No weight. No ache clawing at my chest. Just salt air, rolling waves, and a kind of peace I didn’t think I deserved anymore. 🌅
Like Jeffers’ ocean, it wasn’t gentle or forgiving. It didn’t try to comfort me. But it taught me something deeper—how to let go. How to exist without gripping so tightly to the pain. How to be, even for a moment, unburdened.
This poem is my answer to that call—the voice of the ocean as it met me where I was, and reminded me what it means to be free. 🌊
What the Ocean Told Me
It don’t knock when it calls your name,
just rolls in steady like a slow-burn flame,
keeps time with a heart that don’t break or bend—
just comes back again and again and again.
I stood where the shoreline blurs into grace,
Myrtle wind and salt on my face,
twenty years of ghosts in my chest—
and the tide said, boy, lay it to rest.
Yeah, the waves crash hard, never asking why,
never begging forgiveness, never learning to cry,
just freedom in motion, wild and wide—
a truth you can’t fake, no place to hide.
And I swear it whispered through the foam and blue,
you don’t have to carry what’s killing you,
let it sink where the dark runs deep,
some things ain’t yours to keep.
I went under where the silence sings,
where the weight of the world don’t mean a thing,
and for the first time in twenty long years,
I didn’t feel the ache, didn’t taste the tears.
Just floated there like a sail set free,
no past behind, just the pull of the sea,
no chains, no fire, no shadowed cost—
just a man and the miles he thought he lost.
The ocean don’t love you, it don’t pretend—
it’ll take you whole or make you mend,
but somewhere between the pull and the fall,
it teaches you how to lose it all.
And I think that’s the lesson it left in me—
you don’t find freedom, you let it be,
you loosen your grip, you let it ride,
like a broken man learning the tide.
So now when the noise gets too damn loud,
and the weight of the world won’t let me bow,
I close my eyes, hear that endless hymn—
and the ocean comes rolling back again.
If you want to explore more voices answering today’s prompt. Step beyond this page and into the wider current of #NaPoWriMo—where each voice bends the world in its own way. You can find them here: https://napowrimo.net/
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