untitled

 

I cannot give you beaches.
Waves do not rush
to my shore. Here,
the meeting of still waters
and their edge is obscured
by a community of roots
lifting mangroves over water, stained--
not the blue of postcard skies,
a young heron's wing, your eyes
--my water is stained like China Black
and is thick with decay.

This is no safe place for wanderings.
You cannot, restful, a salty wind
blowing the hair back from your brow,
happen upon a shell, white
and porous or other delicate treasures.

No. You must get in
up to your knees and further:
Down, until your eyes appear reptilian,
skimming the water's surface and the salt
parches your lips--
Deep down, buried under a living layer
of green and black, through a knot
of weeds and roots--
Through the embrace of underwater grasses,
down to deposits of my rich sediment,
where everything is decomposing,
sustaining the mangrove and pickeral weed and
purifying these waters before
they should ever mingle with ocean tides.

---

You are like the alchemist. I have seen
your changes, transmutations not found
in the shell-thin pages of a bibliotheca chimica
and, in your presence, I, too, have changed.

If water can be as wine, why
not give me beaches of gold,
a breeze that is salty on my lips
and an expanse of blue
that dissolves into the sky and
drops to depths no man
has reached?

---

He is suddenly still.
He is reaching for something.
In his eyes, there is a flash
of realization and too soon
he has pushed through
silt, beneath dead matter, to come
to this solid conclusion:

I will not give him beaches.