On the low-flung periphery of the salt marsh bay,
near the twisted beach, an eddy--

Sun low with the tide going up
where softly and under I lay.

For a pillow I was given
a yellow shell.

My ears were listening.

In its restlessness and reaching,
my tongue and its languages
felt lashed and closed.

I shall not leave
my waterworld.

But I must go,
ashore.

Hermit crab
raised itself up.

One silvery minnow played
across my open eyes.

Then, a cloud-blue sky
answered me
with a white seabird,
overhead circling.

So strange and beautiful,
this land of my dream I see--
in my amphibian way.

Either I will
Be very good
Or very bad;
In my middle ground
Lie burnt bridges
And sunken ships.
One shore or the other
Is where I will land,
I refuse to drown
In the waters between.
Others have built
Makeshift rafts
And occasionally,
Large boats, on which
They peacefully navigate.
But this I scorn.
Though the horizon shows
No evidence of any other
Feature but endless water,
The isles do exist,
And I will not rest
Until I have found one of them.
I hope it is the better one.
But I have lived
Many years now,
Having spurned
The floating comforts
Where others gathered,
And can no longer guard against
The temptation of dry land
After a lifetime afloat.

Where do good ideas come from?
They shrivel away from the hypnotizing light of a virtual socialite
They grow toward the sun out above the clouds
Ever-present from birth to death,
They're the latest permutations of the same explosion that started that
Fusion core up there running
Running without stopping for a billion years
Fueling the experiments of life that consciousness spontaneously manifested
Across the planets
Each a test of a different vibrational frequency
Incompatible with one another but coexistent
Mercury's barren silver mines
And the Venusian valleys
And the regal red sands of Mars
And Jupiter's infinite wisdom and so forth to the edge of the Oort Cloud
And the green and blue ecology of earth, the waterworld
Where the entire drama we've seen so far has been carried out
The audience has grown in appetite
And doesn't always see that it too is the performance
But the unwilling blindness is all part of the sublime suspense of this subcosmic game
The planetary curiosity,
Can we make it? Would it matter?
We'll never truly die when we forget time

The great flood had begun;
Replacing the land with a waterworld dotted with mountain top islands;
Arks of mammalian preservation.

It was there I stood as the moon fell.

Night had never been so bright;
Luna inching ever closer;
Craters becoming more and more visible;
Resolution broadcasting high definition;
I raised my hands to the sky;
Reaching out to catch the massive satellite;
First contact came as my hands bore down;
Soft silt of the gray quality puffed;
My arms and legs began to bend;
The weight so tremendous that the effort shook my body;
Hers as well;
My left knee struck the land;
Terra redoubling my efforts;
Heaving with all my might I shrugged;
Sending the moon back towards the heavens;
I watched silently;
Luna was returned to her orbit;
The flood began to dissipate as tidal forces resumed;
Leaving me alone;
Hands to the sky on one knee;
Looking down at the world;
From the mountain of Everest.