When I Take Thee to the Sea

When I take thee to the sea,
Thou will know the land of my birth,
the land of my youth and a world left to the irretrievable past.

Here by the sea, the sand is as fine as time, and as such
like time, it leaks through the fingers of man and woman with 
just the slightest space between.

By the sea, the fog settles like an apparition, and it covers 
the earth crust and makes a curtain for the horizon. The fog distorts the 
shape of the slow ships so they appear like beast in search of 
water in the desert. 

In the harbors, thou will see old men, their ships,
their home and they tell stories of alien lands and of the people of
their youth who may be long since dead.

The brigantines sit in the corner like drunken men who
have outstayed their welcome but stay to be with their own.
They once harbored mariners foolish enough to believe the 
sea was their own, and now their hubris has made orphans of their children
and widows of their wives. Their bodies are ocean detritus that 
sleep in ossuaries of sediment and rock.

Earth is at the mercy of this life giving element as the rock, that
God has put it there, it is warped and destroyed by sea and wind.
Look! The proud mountains set in sand now crumble like ancient
tombs.

Will thou take a breath and smell the kelp and salmon that rise with tide 
from the moon, the body celestial which like an acolyte helps carry
on the ceremony of nature that was established by some unknowable creator 
of it and us?

And if thou will let the cold of her grey waters on your fragile toes, let it 
warm your soul like the common fire to the flesh.

In the summer, when the sun breaks the clouds in the noon, take the plunge with
me and then feel the water around your body first strike you with force; then 
settle and smooth the skin for such an element, irreplaceable to the ether and 
the cosmos and can change the body when given to it without anxieties. 

When I take thee to the sea, thou will know yours truly and 
know the salt on my lips, broken and smooth.