A glistening jellyfish moon crowds the velvet sky
dusted with salt stars
Moonrays glint frosty on curling waves that crawl,
roll and hop like dogs
hunting the shore
Dark sand slithers on my feet and seaweed waters wash my cryptic etchings
I am here to feel her presence
I wait for her name to ride a seathrown zephyr to my ear
I wait for the moment of knowing
When the spume spattered wind enters my chest
and cools my burning heart
then I will know she is with me
Ships float silent as ghosts, sliding between worlds of sea and sky
a billion fishes squirm and feed in the deep,
and untouched stones wait somberly,
and bones are strewn like seeds on the ocean’s bed,
dreaming
And where is she? At sea, visiting the sleeping ships?
or brushing green fingers across glimmering, wriggling scales?
or resting beneath the water’s weight, her head on an anemone?
waiting
For me? I’m here!
Breathe your sea-green breath onto my heart,
drape your kelpen hair across my eyes
and press your lips of brine on mine
Tell me you are here!
Scribe your name in luminescent algal blooms,
guide the fickle wind through shadow spiraled shells,
bathe me with a rogue wave!
Split the clouds with jagged white!
Please!
I’m here!
Like an oyster chewing sand I wait,
I breathe the night I taste the salt,
cadent waves slap my shins, green clings between my toes
Clouds swallow the moon and the world is emptied
Shadows slurp the sand, I feel their blind licking,
the wind hovers like a wet fog,
I’m a bare ash dripping in a stagnant void,
waiting for her voice
Then, light returns!
The moon like a white sword cuts the onyx clouds
a shimmering pearlescent blade slashes
etching an icy line through water and shore
I follow the lightline like an arrow pointing
I track the pallid gleam across the glinting waves, the oilbright sand
and at the white path’s end I find her
In the lunar glow mere strides from me,
a living shell of golden green
maroon and amber, seafoam,
lucent opaline calcium spiral
On a mound of sand, its pedestal
in a ring of light, its stage
her prints glint on its looping surface
her whispers circle its coiled chambers
She has answered me there, in the shining shell!
I detach my feet from the hungry sand, she is near,
three steps to cross worlds, she is here!
I kneel at her altar, cupped hands
I bow, dipped in moonlight,
I slip my fingers under
caracol carapace
Cool and glistening, heavy as love
heavy and dense as a blue star,
dense and thick and undulating warmth
warm gripping my fingers wetly,
skin on skin squirm dermic lightning
Eager flesh, alert and verdant
Her salty lips? Her tongue? Her eye?
intimate press, wet and twitching, seeking on my palm
Alive! A life living within
explores without the spiral’s mouth
Is it you? I dare to ask in fervent whispered tones
She seems nod her umber head, her stalks are lithe and quivering
and gusts of wind and sudden waves applaud her regal beckoning
I lift her to my florid face, my quaking lips, my moonlit eyes
I sense within that boneless guise, my love, back from the other side
It’s you, my dear, my love, my queen, my ever only always!
I knew that even ocean deeps could never keep you from me!
You’ve sent me whispers on the breeze, caressed me through the waves,
and now you fuse with mollusc kind to be mine once again!
She reaches out her rippling flesh, she wants to touch my mouth
where often as a woman she would trace her fingers round
I draw her near, I smell the sea, I see the moon so vividly
I feel her tickle, tentacle, I taste her ocean, salmuera
She grips,
my lip,
elastic,
firm,
she’s coming in
I know it’s her
I open wide
I take her whole
she and I
are of one soul
my tongue
slides
on mucin
slime
I wait to drink
her holy brine
into me
a probing thrust
palate, throat
campanilla
One!
We are one!
We are one once again!
When I breathe it’s your breath, ah! I can’t let this end!
One more step, oh my dear, it will wed us forever,
one mere moment of pain to unite us eternal
Just keep still,
hold your breath,
close your eyes,
just a pinch,
just a bite,
just a blink and you’re mine!
Bursting gush
liquid rush
squirming love,
you, inside,
through my throat, to my heart, to my black secret depths
find your way through my veins, fill my bones, glow my eyes,
you’ve been so long at sea and now back finally,
yes I’ve taken your shell, but your new shell is me!
Glimmering carapace, hollow in my hand,
I drop it where I found it, lonely on the sand
The frothing azul sea still calls, but doesn’t use my name
the deep is washed of familiarity,
bizarre, thrashing, liquid entity,
and my empty shell is full
We watch the sky together,
the horizon, that fine line, between dark and other dark,
is split with molten gold