The ocean moves like restless hands these days.  
Abrasive: rubbing cliffs to sand and dust,
their spirits crushed to foam. Alone too long
is what I think, Aegean fathers pull-
-ing back their sons. But myth is myth, I must
admit. Instead, the water beats the shore
for natural want, its swells and frothing tides
some violent children, asteroid-born, conceived
from outer orbit kisses. Moon-side, roar-
ing waves arise, as high as mountain peaks.
Their tensions break and churn up flotsam: jag-
-ged wood from ships reclaimed. My lips, too, crack
apart from frigid air. The blood is cop-
-per salt to taste. But salt still, none the less:
familiar sea foam flowing through my veins.
Genetic instinct winds me back to shrines,
the Greeks and Romans knowing more than we,
Poseidon having planted home alread-
-y thick upon their lips. Ensconced in coves,
Amalfi’s citrus piers had housed the songs
of sirens, trilling hymns to Venus. Her
divine softness, human-wrought: distilled
from strong eternal surf. I think it wants
her back again. And so it hurls itself
against the shore to beat our body’s blood
back into foam. My feet are cold atop
the rocks, the goose-flesh prickling needles deep
in skin. My head is past the precipice,
suspended at the point of no return.
My arms are tingling in the rain-drenched squall,
beginning to dissolve as salt is known
to do. I take a breath before the fall–
a retrograded Aphrodite’s sigh–
now flooded as the clifftop leaves my soles.