(i) Surface

The ocean remembers
a hand

the body of a child waist deep
it remembers touch

the promise of forgiveness
the ocean remembers

the loneliness of water
how we stepped away from it

dripping with ideas, our hands
furious creatures

how we arched our backs
& it ran from us

regrouped

watched as we built engines out of air
as we shoaled through our salt cities

as we whittled boats that bled their black grief
into its sunken cerulean mouth

how the grief settled across the seabed
into a funeral of fish

wrapped in a swirling dark cloak
stitched from its ancestors

the oceans are not blue
they are bruised

we bite our own hands
wash in the same water we drink from
are the same water we drink from

& now
the tide is turning
to look at you

Listen
can you hear the sea ticking?

(ii) Twilight

The ocean is a museum
remembers in sediments

the whole of time in a drop of water
humanity in strata

Here:
The first human to hold their breath
Here:
the first human to be their breath
Here:
The first human to Medusa their breath

to poison Poseidon
who dreams of deserts

this twilight cathedral
this prayer mat

//

Did you forget the ocean is within you?

can you feel the surge in your veins
a flash tide of belonging?

we battle our blood currents
swim upstream of our egos

but there are things
in our depths

that are jealous of the ocean’s belief
understand the language of the sea
& why it keeps returning

these sudden shallows
these rip currents of rage
this conviction that we can harness the waves
leash the ocean

carry us further from the shore
than we have ever been

swim against the song

a man stands alone on the shore
collecting waves in a plastic carrier bag
that he will take to market later.

On another coast a party of drunks
punch the water
until it retreats.

In a seaside town
frozen fish
are released back into the wild

the water without calls to the water within

(iii) Deep

We know that

things live in the dark places.
while we engineer certainties

something without a face
watches us

its lost siblings
waits for our return

knowing that

our hearts are
tectonic plates drifting

moving further from one another

down here light loses its way
& shadows shoal & flit, are ideas

sunk in the body’s blue subconscious

it is only in these darks
that we find the bright

philosophies self-illuminate
& the ocean remembers love

how something small dropped in its
wide knowing

becomes something big
that can swallow cities

o, we humans
we come in waves.

//

& you and I
are the same body of water
touching our lips
to different shores

& somewhere a child
takes the hand of the ocean
& a smile ripples out across the still surface
of a face

//