The Biological Composition of a Drop of Seawater is Reminiscent of the Blood in My Veins
My father died this morning;
all his life he sailed
the oceans of the world.
Now the waves break
as waves have broken
wave upon wave.
This is how the waves will
embrace the shores of this land:
everything
eddying layer
upon
layer.
—
All water comes from the ocean.
All water returns to the ocean.
The first philosopher, Anaximander,
said all that is dying
returns to the element
from which it came.
—
This morning, my father died.
The faint trace of a dawning day;
in a few hours, it will be light.
The ridge top is covered with snow.
I shot a hare up there yesterday;
she kept running,
so I hit her again.
When I found her, half
her head was blown off.
Heavy surf hails the day
stealing into view.
Darkness slowly releases
It’s a stranglehold on us.
—
Our memories of the fish,
of the little animals, the ones that always
hid under stones
like the fingerling trout
my brother and I caught when we were
young boys—
that’s what stayed with us,
but that’s also what never sank in:
the knowledge that we come
from the ocean.
That every cell is full of water,
like the ocean itself,
that we are but a bleary-eyed blink
in the sweep of evolution’s dimming vision—
and that’s how the water within us is hidden
from us,
even the tiniest ocean:
the womb from which we come.