November’s first dawn,
no one has yet decided to walk the foreshore.
The Sun teases his arrival behind the horizon
with an assortment of vapor:
gold and silver rings
so the Ocean may don her favorites.
Amidst this proposal
from behind sand dunes, shadowy bodies emerge—
was this the Mist’s trick?
Two men pulling a rowboat
laugh as their feet stomp over to the coast—
they bear brittle oars the Ocean will use to pick her teeth.
The bow cuts into her flowing flesh,
paves a jagged path across her breasts.
In the distance, a young girl approaches the tide.
No one else is here for fear the Ocean
will take her rage out on them.
Before the frigid water can claw at her ankles,
she dives in, swims hard.
Her head buoys above the Ocean’s meniscus.
Treading water—
a primordial world below her kicking feet:
ashamed experiments, ill-formed bastards—
barely time to breathe between
crest after crest washing over her head,
drowning in the Ocean’s anguish.
She dives, twists, and contorts in the callous embrace
until she reaches shifting sands.
The Ocean is the Moon’s disciple.
She made her in her image.
Yet while the Moon is offered poetry and prose,
the Ocean receives piss and plastic.
The girl brings her prayer,
bows down at her feet,
offers herself.
Seagulls scurry across damp sand recently revealed
after the Ocean pulled her skirt back in.
One takes off over the crowd.
None follow.
The lone gull’s wings beat currents
that move the restive Ocean.
In turn, the waves gyre beyond control—
where’s that girl in the undertow?
A morning angel made anew—
baptized in icy, boiling blood—
breaks through thick floes,
soars over the Atlantic.
Finally, the Sun has risen.