The water in your blood
was once in the blood of dinosaurs,
the blood of bears, the blood of wolves.
Your father came and took you,
dipped your feet into the river,
when you were only two weeks old.
And I am nothing of a carpenter
and even less an engineer
but If I were I'd take a hammer
and I would build a bridge to Canada
New windows for our broken homes
a pathway winding westward from
the wailing ocean tide.

i can hear it in the way your voice sounds.

the way you laugh,

the way i can see your smile through the speakers knowing that big heart carries worries and hardships that i will never know.

like quiet refrigerator humming, i can feel the pit of your stomach in mine.

i can see the way the ivy of the ocean spills and rushes around your neck the climbing waters rooting into you.

after the quiet days you will give me a meter and i can feel my heart start running miles, reaching for you,

trying to figure out some way to pick up all of this broken glass so you won’t get cut on the sharp edges.

i’m trying to save this sand that is spilling from my chest into my overflowing hands, so we can build a home together.

trying to bail the water out of the hull of your ship so the salt won’t touch your lips,

because

the ocean is deep and wide and so, so much blue but it isn’t enough to even try
and keep me from you.
i will swim out until im so tired im gasping,

so i can carry you out of the deep, brush the jellyfish from your hair, and whisper to the starfish that have found home in your eyes til they slide away back to their tidepools.

i will kiss the salt away and smother you in fresh water and warm hands to hold.

i know you are sailing in rough waters, the waves beat against my door and it makes me sea sick knowing you’re so far out.

i will turn on the lighthouse and stretch my arms as far as they will go, reaching to pull you back safely to the shoreline,

reaching to bring you home.
​

Seagulls hit the horizon's backboard
off the sands of Pacific Beach.
In my lungs breakers burn out
some forty feet from shore.
They will return.
This jetty'd be a monolith
if this ocean were a sky.
Silt on this deserted
coast scene is encumbered by
bits of driftwood and sun-bleached glass.
The living in this town
are accustomed to the weight. And
tidepools are their hearts:
shallow, mossy, little things
fending for breathe.
This jetty'd be a monolith
if this ocean were a sky.

I spiral happ’ly in,
I feel my flesh
dissolve to wet, to
gaseous mess
and flow flow flow
into the asterism
that is her extra latte French roast
Eye...

She asks, “What do you see?”
I see Himalayan diamond dust,
the wind as particle, sharing the
Sun in glints.
I see spiral arms and accretion discs.
I see stardust, moondust, lovedust
in great grand colorful interwebbings of
lust, of truth, of song, of delight, of Us.
I see RGB Grand Walls of stars;
organized in mind but cosmologically
principled.
I see the possibilities of galaxies -
Unformed
              Adrift
                                            Reaching
  Cooling
Collecting
  Heating
Sparking.
Life giving life.
Lifegiving, Life.
I see an unspoken Universe
of Dust -
Awake to Dance,
to dance to Life.
I see Love.
I see Beauty.
I see worlds not yet.
I see suns unshone.
I see comets unknown.
I see tidepools.
I see fields of fuzzies.
I see Seas.
I see mountains and valleys.
I see Forest.
I see Love.
I see her, and in her,
I see a world, a cosmos, a way;
a way I’d rather be.
A way I’d rather live.
I see Love.
I see her.

Through tears,
I see
the limitless warmth of an unlimited
Un         iv         er         se
in her tawny toffee coffee
Eye.

I can’t say that we go anywhere when we’re gone
That said, have you ever stood somewhere where everything washes up? Everything lost, everything left, everything broken
The ocean is not endless, no
Endless means forgotten
The ocean is everything
When something falls in, it rides the currents for as long as it takes to get somewhere.
Somewhere might be sinking, or in a fish’s gut, on the great Pacific garbage patch or on a little island
If you want to know how to get there I’ll ask you if you know the neighbors
Everything washes up there
Everything lost, everything left, everything lingering
Lobster pots
Shredded lines (the ocean holds all barriers)
Broken buoys (everything that floats, floats forever)
Seagull bones
Cans and bottles
Even rudders
There are stories of how tractor beach got its name:
There was once a whole tractor that washed up on its shores
Gears, wheels, engine, rusted metal (all things lost are not all things forgotten).
Pieces of it are long since buried in the rocks and mussel shells
But the ocean has parts of it somewhere
The ocean has parts of us, somewhere.
The ocean has parts of the seagulls and their wiry legs
Or the murky tidepools (even when we are left behind we are still ocean).
If planets were marbles the earth would be the only blue sphere in the whole pile
The ocean is the universe’s blue moon
One day a tractor came through one of its portals to an island
Heaven is a doubt, but perhaps heaven is Tractor Beach: a place where everything washes up. Where the egrets perch dreamlike above beach roses and sumacs. Where gulls kneel by broken eggs in nests of rocks. Where trash is treasure is the legend of a tractor in tide. A legend of escape, a place to float away, and a view like no other. What else could we need after life?

Low tide exposes
marine terraces and tidepools.
Slim brown bodies
cluster together
near the edge of the pitted mudstone.

One kneels to get a closer look
absorbed in the detail of a sea star
an anemone.

One is hesitant, afraid of the water
a wave, the slippery algae covered rocks.

One only wants to be seen, posed
hip out, knee bent, chin up
with practiced casualness.

Vacation

Florida stretches from nose to
fingertips.  The bold noise of up
here relaxes into  saltwater
beaches.  

I walk along tidepools and search
for wildlife burrowing in the sands
outer banks. The sun is my
companion. We know each other
well.

My tan hands reach for you and
we are stones in the wind.
To love is enough.  To touch
is the breeze of  night.  We
stay still in a swirling mass
of gulls.

Tomorrow is Return,  Today
is the prayer for the birds
to bring their young  to my
castle.

Castles fall,  Dreams lie for a
moment where the seas spilt
the sweat anxźd salt of love

lost  


Caroline Shank
9.14.23