On the Three Forms of Water

Ever since I learned about sea-level rise
I’ve been binge-watching the Atlantic Ocean
but nothing ever really happens. It goes up,
it goes down. Sometimes high tide
floods a section of the city, which is nice
for the street-sweepers and canoeists.

I am so used to thinking about myself
that it’s hard to understand the sea.
What use is singularity in imagining that
seamless, quicksilver commonwealth?

The ocean is liquid, like the mind, elastic
tides of consciousness flowing and probing,
interrogating whatever seeks to contain it.

Ice is like the body, scarred and fractured,
ordained to crack, diminish, melt away.

And the third form—fog on a window,
ghostly mist, the clouds
which adorn the sky in celestial vestments
we glimpse as gaudy rags at sunset—
what could it be but the soul?

We are liquid and we are solid, oceanic
matter cloaked in the garment of being.

As for the ocean: she is coming to collect us
and gather us back into herself, as when,
long ago, your mother picked you up early
from the nurse’s office at school,
and gave you a kiss, and put you to bed,
where you slept without a care in the world.