Birth

I am a wispy cloud

smudged

across a horizon

where eye meets I,

trying to occupy a definite space

in a precise time

where lines don’t blur

and there is clarity of form.

Hard to tell where cloud ends

and sky starts,

where ocean eases into air.

I stay there

hiding in a current

carried along and dropped on sand soft,

floating in the velvet dew of morning,

sleeping in the diamond

punctured onyx of night.

The blue sky, the black sky,

the white cloud — I,

the passenger who exists by the hand of the painter.

I am a shadow playing on the waves,

an eye in the sea learning about seeing,

a coalescing consciousness coming into being -

an aural phantom, a discordant note

trying to bring the melody back around

from white to blue to white to blue.

A silent ballerina pirouetting the tide,

turning,

turning,

coming full circle.