To Rhiannon, Who Will Know
I crawl away from your coming,
crabwalk backward
along the white expanse of sheet.
Too fast, too fast — I'm not ready for you.
And the water is deep and calls me.
I refuse to push.
The pain spirals me up and up.
I do not care what you look like,
how the top of your head will smell,
how your fingers will curve.
The waves spill over the sand,
driftwood snagging my panting breaths.
I refuse to push.
Hours bleed into the blue sky
turning gray at the edges.
I refuse you passage,
enter instead the flooded cave.
Sightless fish, ribbons of eels.
Ghost shrimp, translucent,
scatter in the light-tipped waves.
Seaweed tangles the surface,
gray spume blows in.
The night is breezy,
rain not far away.
The rocky sky curves overhead
narrowing to channels plowing
deep into the earth.
Aeons of slapping sea
have smoothed the walls,
easing their carve.
Eyes are there, bright in the darkness.
Silence, but for my breathing
filling the cave,
pushing against the tide's urging hand,
finger pressed to finger.
Thunder gives you voice;
lightning gives you sight;
wind whispers a map;
rain tells you it's time.
You will not wait for me
to return to the shore.
Caught in a net,
I'm hauled onto the sand,
grit in my teeth, my hair.
A hook in my cheek,
a rare creature, radiant
in rain and moonlight
no fight left.
You're here and your slime
mixes with mine on the
exhausted beach of my chest.
Your face bruised and blunted
from the journey through
that rocky cave.
The ocean's gift — not
to be refused.