From the Sea

The Sun was in her eyes,

The brine was on her mouth,

The Sea flowed east to west,

The Wind blew north to south.

The water washed her knees,

The wavelets slapped her thighs,

The ocean lapped her hips about,

Like ribbons white of Paradise:

There where the putti abide,

Wrapped in cumulus glory,

Flecked by Michelangelo’s brush,

Shy actors awaiting their story,

Some like tight pink buds

Never to be unfurled,

Some all tensile to come unsprung,

Becoming boy or girl.

The ocean slipped around her waist,

Her legs went rippling below

Like ribbons floating on the breeze,

Sea-legs in an underwater show.

Before in dreams she'd waded deep,

Before plunged hands in water,

Before she'd lifted a babe up high,

A gift from the Holy Fathers:

They who dwell in Paradise,

Or painted on a chapel wall:
In their laps Earth's unborn souls:

Humankind’s future, all in all:

But having lifted up the babe

From out the life-giving sea

She gently placed him back again,

A future not to be.

The Sun was in her eyes,

The brine was on her mouth,

The Sea flowed east to west,

The Wind blew north to south.

She plunged her arms in deep,

The babe she raised up high:

The one that she would keep,

He had your mouth, your eyes.

An emissary from heaven above

Or masterpiece of evolution?

In either case, manifest love

Turned the tide, the Wheel’s revolution:

Fortune’s smile, girl or boy, joy’s

Relay from paternity to maternity,

Whatever the pain of the coming years,

This moment outruns it, this patch of eternity.