Reflections Upon the Waves of Infinity

Reflections Upon the Waves of Infinity: Observations from the Shore

At the shoreline, the smallest occurrence can open into something infinite.

A thunderstorm gathers strangers beneath a pier. A child discovers a world inside an apparently empty bucket. Warm October water seems to forget that summer has ended. A dead fish becomes an image of mortality, while the recurring waves suggest a permanence human life cannot promise.

In Reflections Upon the Waves of Infinity: Observations from the Shore, Bruce Whealton looks beyond the familiar beauty of the beach to explore the forces moving beneath it: memory, imagination, loneliness, identity, seasonal change, and the human longing to believe that warmth will return.

These poems inhabit the uncertain boundary between observation and reflection. The shore becomes a place where outer landscapes reveal inner realities—where changing light and water awaken thoughts about loss, creativity, vulnerability, and survival. The natural world continues according to rhythms larger than any individual life, yet the person watching remains conscious of how easily a life, a season, or a sense of self can disappear.

As the collection unfolds, the poet’s desire is no longer simply to visit the ocean, but to become like it: recurring, elemental, and impossible to annihilate. The waves offer no simple reassurance. Instead, they invite us to imagine what it might mean to belong to something enduring—to move through change while remaining part of an infinite pattern.

This is a collection about looking closely at the visible world until it reveals the invisible questions beneath it.

A Natural Gathering

As if the force of the waves
was not enough
to remind us
of natural forces
greater than observation...
a thunderstorm comes in
bringing in a natural light show,
the rain and echoing thunder
drown out any sound
from the rhythmic waves.
People crawn beneath the pier -
There is nothing like nature
to bring people together
for a show.

An Unexpected Invitation

The beach
has no knowledge or memory
of the season's change.
A summer sun
bakes Autumn sands
today,
in October,
and the tide
and the waves,
bring summer waters -
warm, hot,
inviting.

Childlike Imagination

At the beach
by thewater
a very small kid's bucket
a lady and a small girl
are looking deep
and saying something.
They turn over the bucket
and from where I sit
there is nothing in
that little bucket.
Maybe if I was there
with that little girl
I would find fascination
in tiny things
that can only be seen
from that certain
point of view
before reality
obliterates
imagination
and still innocent hopes
before mother and father
tell you of a dangerous
world.

I want to believe the Warmth Will Return

On this cold autumn beach,
I stare at the waves
arriving from
every possible shore,

and I do not know
whether I am looking
forward or backward
through time—

as though memory
and hope were openings
in a double slit,

and every wave
could carry both
what has disappeared
and what has not
yet returned.

But I remember
the warmth,

the life that floated back
upon the waves,

and I want to believe—
I want to hope—
that this season
of death
is only temporary,

that somewhere
beyond the cold horizon,
the warmth
has already begun
its return.

Loss of Self & Identity

Sometimes I'm afraid
that having found myself
my voice and my self expression
that the ideas will stop coming
that I'll stop writing...
maybe losing some sense of myself.
My writing -
being a poet -
it's who I am.
And every poet,
every writer
faces the fear
that the ideas will one day run out
and all that will remain
are old poems,
old ideas,
like memories of what once was...
like someone you loved
and lost...
but it's not exactly like that.
These poems,
the ideas I've shared
will always be there
like children,
like anything else that is a part of ourselves
- a creation...
and my words are still alive
and hopefully always will be.

The Color Of Death

I saw a little boy
carrying a dead fish
at the beach.
The fish was flat - decayed -
the color of wet sand
viewed through my tinted glasses,
what added to the gloom of the day.
It made me think of change.

Here it was
a warm October day and
just 3 months ago
this beach was packed
with people,
and water more inviting.

These days are getting colder.
I hate the cold;
it reminds me of something inside myself;
something not just cold
but something dead -
life isn't like the seasons;
there's little guarantee
that the sun and warmth
will return.

To Be

I would become the beach
and the planet—

moving as a wave
that must return,

unchanging,

only appearing
to be vulnerable,

appearing as an object,
existing as a wave
displaced.

A planet with predictable
paths to follow,

each rotation returning
to a beginning
where no end
is expected,

tracing the first
and only path
forever.

I would be free
of forces
beyond my patterns—

no longer weakened
by everything
that came so close
to annihilating me.

Objects senselessly hurled
at me
would burn away
before coming close enough
to harm me.

Each day,
each moment,
infinitely divisible—

each moment,
day,
week,
and year

part of an indestructible
permanence.