Sea Saw

1

Time is so deep
you can’t touch bottom.
I live on a shoal but
the sand is shifting.
The mermaids whose
element this is, sing “Let go
man of earth, our embrace
is your truth.” and every surge
sounds, like the whispers in a
shell, my eternal knell.

2.

I have watched the waves
rolling over over, my
eyes sea green with their
passage; from what dreaming
jewelled reefs, what
crystalline depths, shall my
meaning ascend, bubble
borne, fresh rinsed
as the first dawn?

3.

O plummet down, dark
down, beyond the reach of
light, where monsters blind
but deadly move scaly parts.
The eroding years dangle
before nightmare heads
the lure of hope, then snap!
their thin mouths grin as
icy teeth sink in.

4.

But I rise on your rainbow,
O joy bringer, yours also is
the death deep place, cold
clamped, where frozen lives
long for your touch.
No depths can hold you, no
heights contain, cosmos
compelling love, flood
this meagre tide, even my
meagre tide, again.