(i) 

I go to you every morning

toward your engulfing edges,

your milk foam lips, that salted smolder

smile. It is the closest I get to sea

you once a day, anew             smack

in the middle of the strait, I stare

straight into your wide-eyes making wavelets

and ringlets lovelied by the distance.

Only becoming as they appear, here:

strong, though sparing me some

of the tears and brine-soaked feet

by the time they reach shore.

(ii)

There is no surrogate to carry

me in the world or through

it but this water is a lifeline, an umbilical

cord to hold; some days there is nothing

else to bother with then go to its bosom.

There is nowhere else to try and be.

I struggle with the word presence, I imagine

being present is a gift not found

by searching in the dictionary, I imagine

It would be like being birthed, before 

there is nothing. Before night’s swindling

arms, before noon’s strung out heart & the

neurotic neurons nervously going about 

their business—swirling little swivels 

of all there is to be alive.

For, I know it is real. It exists 

spread out on the dining room table, look

there, dice this, dole out that, don’t doubt

in the same way I exist, in the same way 

I, now, must go to that nook

on the ocean bedside

lamppost myself tall, breathe still 

into my limbs—a small and beautiful 

light flickering into all the corners of you.