Sea Change
A poem
I want to kiss the place
where the inside of your upper arm
and inner forearm meet,
opposite the bow,
where it creases like the sands
when they fold to allow
the tide to roll over their seams
You drew back to bend
and tried to spear the mass for me
My eyes, refusing to dilate in the darkness,
saw it as black,
while yours, wide open,
couldn’t fathom that kind of opaque
You believed it to be gray
right up until you replaced your harpoon
with an instrument of soft strings,
playing songs in spiccato, buoyant as you were,
to lift me up and out
of my deep and fretful sleep
All its legend and size, its omnipotence,
I believed it encompassed everything,
yet somehow remained outside us all
I perceived its enormity as apathy
that swallowed me whole
My instinct was always to hunt down my fear,
but how can you capture
what released you into the world
with your first breath,
what delivered you through its mouth
My music took longer to come
