Gravity: Summer Solstice, 1992

Go tell it to the sea,
how he should let go
his moonstruck,

his shameless high tides –
climbing each day, each night
kissing at her cloudless
indifference.

Perhaps he’d answer
that it’s all cyclical – hope
driving him up the beach and the brooding
low tides.

Even so, most of his time is chasing
fish into nets, lobbing
bodysurfers towards shore,

and coming to grips with a notion –

there is nothing new under the sun,
and
what goes up must come down.

Crabs have always scuttled among the rocks.
Sharks are still enforcing Darwinism.
And late this summer hurricanes will once again
rage up the Atlantic coast.

But only one moon, fair as pearl dust,
trails her sable skirts across the night
sky, and what is the ocean
besides his faith in gravity? –

dreaming the day wanderchild falls,
when fire makes peace with earth
and sky with restless sea.