I am a wave of the sea,
inner ripples confound me.

I inexorably flow to the shore,
but am at once borne back
to the beginning.

Other waves accompany me
and – true – we may be
but the same swell
in a larger current.

Or the tide may turn
and cut our journey short.

The breezes blow me
like a seed across acres,
subtly binding the river
in an archaic grip.

The fortitude of forgetting
is given to me,
for i may be
the most changing
of forms, an ebb
or flow, following
perfection,
to be decimated
upon pebbles,
no more.

I dare you:
try to grab me
and contain me
and confine me.

I flow still on,
though may merge with you.
And we may rise skyward
or invert the motion
towards a soggy bed.

I began in me, the sea,
as a speck of possibility,
full of life,
and yet these planktoneon shimmers
elude me.

I reflect the sun of a time
and though waves pass
through me,
i reflect as many back
at that perennial face.

I speak in the liminal
space between absence
and presence.
But my greatest sound
is only heard
when i crash onto
endlessly ancient sand.

There, a weary traveller,
half smiling, may remark
to his beloved of
the briefness of my span.

But in truth, i am not so separate
from you,
and where i go, you go,
even if it be a separate shore.

I am neither motion
nor its absence,
but the ebb and flow of
an ocean imperceptibly
enormous.

Indeed, though it shapes my course
and the arc of my back,
and the glint of my smile
and the wave of my hand,
i know not its depths,

nor could ever know
until i am dragged back
into blue
with the love
of familiar embrace,
 the needing to know replaced
all beautiful, beautiful, beauty all
and all singing their song,
their delectable song
their song a-sky with blossom
nonethesame refrain,
but unified in cadence.

At the shore of Eden
i found out i was the ocean
expressing itself
and was a phoenix
inbetween heaven and hell,
glancing off the glassy
fractions of life.

I am the sea
and am always.