I can smell the Javanese trees on your breeze
a butterfly in Borneo spreads her wings
Typhoons tear across your broad belly,
dragging Chinese junks to your bottom
and silver combers swish to my feet
Hello, Blue Pacific
Your brow furrows with Bering blows
cold feet wiggle in Chilean sounds and passages
you claw at the cliff bank beneath me
greedy riptides belie your placid name
Hello, Blue Pacific
Under your rollicking, foam-frothed mane
swim tentacled and fanged and many polyped things
creatures of the Mariana Trench scrub your bowels
Heaven’s lamp slips below your endless border
Goodbye, Blue Pacific
the whirling crimson and indigos are here
thump-thump and siren eyes descend
I go now to gray days, far from your tranquility
where you will ripple on seeping white walls
your tongue licking the cold steel benches
until I drown on land again
Copyright 2021 by J.D. Rush
