OLD SEA WOMAN IS ILL
He comes for Conversation -
To comfort in my time of Illness...
I welcome him with older hands...
Brown marks of wrinkled elder beauty -
Birth marks long gone into the tide-worn
Skin of a different Body - a different Waters
Give me Jelly Fish and Sea Horses to ride
Give me Harbor Seals and memories of
Life beneath the Waves of Time
Pelicans on the Wind: I want the Sea!
This Land Business is making
Weakness out of Me
Used to ride these Waves of Salt and Mer -
Used to swim for a mile without complain
Now I cannot walk this room with Breath
Everything of Water is leaving me
The Canoe danced across the Water
I was Mistress of its every Waltz
Now I am Older than I should be possible
Now I have less Courage, Faith -
Only Hope stays in me like a Demented Bird
Scolding Me - a Parrot losing Plumes -
Old Feathers falling to a Floor of my own
Lost and Damaged Dreams
Fly more like a Sea Bird, Silly Harbinger!
Swim as a Sea Lion swims - all glide and distance!
Breathe in the Waters if you must!
All Rivers run and run and run to some Sea
Of their own Imagined Nations of Treasures -
Somewhere, they will find Them....
My hands dry as old berries smooth his Face -
It's good to touch salt tears and know they are
For me and for what I was once when young:
A Dolphin - not a Thing of Earth - but of the
Sea that gave me Birth - yes, of This Sea -
That breathed my Birth....
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What an interesting idea - the Sea giving us birth.
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