I think the sea will welcome you
For I've seen it in your eyes a hundred times,
And heard it crashing through your voice.
I think it has much to teach you in wildness
For you hold in you the same immense, awesome power
It wields when it crushes ships
And batters cliffsides smooth,
And the same silvered grace
It sways with when the moon trails her fingers through the waves on clear nights.

It does not apologize for its savagery,
For the way it rakes its fingers across the shore,
The way it takes.
It cannot be small.
It cannot be meek.
It cannot be silent.
It cannot be
Tame-
Its gentleness and its violence are lovers, ever embracing
And it has never wondered
Why.

It IS, and it is
Exquisite in its rawness.
It can be smooth as glass, murmuring its great hush to the sands
And yet it can within a moment
Rage!
With no shame, no restraint,
Uncontainable and
Unignorable.

I see all of this beneath your skin when your face darkens and you think no one has noticed.
I see your vastness, pressing out,
And I see you soothe it back into silence.
I see it and it moves me toward it like the tide
With its feral beauty,

Yes-
I imagine the ocean will rejoice to rise around you and hold you up as a part of it,
For there are some people- I've said as much-
Who belong to the earth in a special way.
People whose feet the ground worships
And whose face the wind kisses
And whose fingers the grasses reach for.

People whose eyes
The sea lives in.

I imagine it waits for you.