page 213

A Way

Without you I am making up an ocean.

Any resemblance to real oceans living or dead
is purely coincidental.
                     I'm calling it swimmingly
but I lie.
            Distance and its usual glitter.

Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

My ocean is always on my other left.

Closer my own toes clumsy ghosts startle
the fry in my tide pools to skitter little
to nothing and so still again.

                              All oceans
are subject to change without notice.

All
oceans are proofs solved in whispers.

                              No one
can marry an ocean although anyone can propose.

Kelp and paua bits and paua pieces
and green glass worn to a stone of its old self.

My ocean is neither express nor implied.

I meant to make some us up earlier.

All oceans are studies in revision.

My ocean is trying to say nothing.