Land lovers
Let not the deep swallow me up -
This is just to say I was on an island in my mind
I saw a beach with water on both sides
the search is over
love was right before my eyes
I saw my life from the outside
time like a flat circle
an ellipse or a rhyme
this is just to tell you something I surmised:
a world of my own design
two suns hot like snake eyes
and a heart only love can open
until I master this art I am broken
I am nothing
but space debris in the ocean
predator and the prey
days late and so far away
but the osprey nest, the cinnamon fern
they’ve been hushed
been briefed on my solar return
the mud flats, the dunes, the moving salt marshes,
the lagoon, a still glass bay
and the thick black darkness
the sky unravels starless
and like a fool I go from scarlet
to crimson,
violet,
vermilion,
in the eyelet of the storm,
this cosmic prism,
the sea turns herself over
and she listens.
John William Waterhouse, “Nymphs Finding the Head of Orpheus”