Crab Sticks

Gift, 2

J. Neil C. Garcia

Lost in the sea’s
   unforgiving blue,
   I seek you.
   Before me
   the day unscrolls
   its naked scripture:
   sun, vision’s burning field,
   islands, faint presences
   crumbling in the distance,
   water, the fickle immensities
   life is made
   constant by.
   And it strikes me
   I love the sea
   because it borders
   this suffering world
   and the next:
   the soul, it is said,
   travels in a boat
   from a winding inland river,
   homing clear-eyed
   toward the ocean–
   which is the bottomless
   beyond.
   And I know:
   here, upon this beach,
   wash the crushed remains
   of what was once mortal:
   bone and kelp,
   driftwood and tentacle,
   porous red coral–
   keepsakes
   life leaves behind
   before
   dissolving
   back to brine.
   I am home here, then,
   whom the world
   never loved,
   and from its torn edges
   I can almost see
   it all end:
   an onrushing tide,
   a radiant sea-swell
   sweeping away all appearance,
   gentle eddies
   whittling the self
   till it is no longer
   even sand.
   I think of you
   landlocked and lost
   in another element–
   your body.
   The sea teaches me
   love is a wish
   not for safety
   but for destruction.
   I am not ashamed
   to admit it:

  I love you
   the way water loves.
   Which is to say
   I wish the world
   were through with you,
   so you could return to me
   ravaged, upon this shore:
   a shell
   held tight
   inside my palm.