I have never been a Sailor
but I feel the sea roiling below me
on a broken-cloud morning.
We have so much to teach
each other, the tides and I—
an ocean knows how to never be still,
how to be furiously strong and wild
yet dance so delicately with the moon.
How to hold something up when
it is flotsam. How to claim what sinks.
Sea, can you hear me?
I am
singing all the harmonies to the
drum of your pulse. I
can show you
how to wear bones and how to move
through air wearing gravity out loud.
I can light fires while you can only extinguish.
See? I am igniting
my curiosity right here
on your sandy shoulder.
Watch me bend down
and silently kneel before your mysteries,
folding my legs like sorrow feels.
J. Pratt-Walter, © 2023
