^{with a final couplet by e. e. cummings}

As Karen Blixen said, the cure’s the sea
—or sweat, or tears—but I prefer the sea.

In fact, it’s homeopathy. Why cry
with eyes baptised (if reddened) by the sea?

The metaphors of fabric come to mind:
cool silk or aqua velvet, summer sea

            (or better, come to body: intimate,
            enveloped skin on skin, the lover sea).

The bone-ache deep, the pains gone unexplained:
for now just dive, ameliorator sea.

The “mermaid’s tears,” smoothed glass or plastic: lovely
but hazardous to creatures of the sea.

This evening’s rough: Poseidon snaps my straps.
Pathetic fallacy, bipolar sea.

And in their one-piece suits, the ladies age
and silver, laugh and rage: September sea.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea.

^{—after lucille clifton}

the estuary opens to the bay
and the bay stretches into the pacific and so on 
therefore and such-and-such,
none of them empty or full
in the way no frame can minimize nor contain horizon—
yet the ocean can be it, even when sky
and sea are the same late summer gray
they blend together erasing, making
each other. the humpback whale
breaching the slate screen is the only
one who knows the tension between.
here arrive two children winding bikes
on the path to the point passing succulents
and ground squirrels, and three pelicans
follow in spinning dives to slash
down on this estuary guarded 
by gurgling sea lions. the children 
collecting rocks and examining mussel shells, 
millennia in their hands, nod to each other and laugh
racing childhood to the pier’s edge.

within the loops and lines of our initial correspondence,
each letter holds the history of its defining nature

                                                 now, some will not slip cleanly from my mouth

instead hook into the valley of my lips,
force themselves through the fleshiness of my cheek,
and attempt to jump-swim back down my throat
             choke me         with their spurred dorsal fin, gaping gills
a fish refusing its fate

and I’m reminded of that time at the lake,
where tannins colored the bottom of our paper cups,
dew falling on our faces,
and you told me I tasted like the lake
– spruce and freshwater life –
a memory we share, even if, by next morning,
we see the evening differently
me acutely aware you will never claim me
while you suffer with the fish bones you dared swallow

even through your denial,
you cannot question how,
when I say your name, 
my voice always quivers

but in this poem nothing dies.

Alone in the poem, I make myself
brave. No—I show brave 
to my body, take both to the ocean. 

Come hurricane, come rip current, 
come toxic algal bloom. 

In March, I drift past the estuary
to watch an eight-foot dolphin 
lap the Mill River 

like a cat pacing a bathtub, 
sick and disoriented. 

Biologists will unspool her empty intestines, 
weigh her gray cerebellum.
She swam a great distance to die 

alone. I’m sorry—I lied. I can’t control 
what lives or dies. I need a place

to stow my brain. To hold 
each moment close as a sand flea
caught in my knuckle hairs.
  
Please, someone—
tell me a poem can coax 

oil from a sea bird’s throat. 
Tell me what to do
with my hands—my hands—

what can my hands do now?