Mother Ocean,

after Anne Sexton

we did not expect you to be so wildly unyielding:
you bless and bluff us with your currents, you make
our coastlines look like repentance, our buildings
rubbled blunders.

rocks

and sand dash themselves against You. I stand,
my feet diminishing in your swooshing and foaming,
craving your salt. You keep
giving and taking and we keep taking and taking,
only giving

You our ash.

how many of our bodies have filled your mouth?
You, rolling like a woman in labor in your green
blood, uproar as the prescient reckoning.

funny

how the words historical and hysterical resemble one
another.
carve
out the organs and they are the same without
papers.

we mail postcards with You rollicking picturesque,
relaxing with our hymns. but You
are not tranquil, no,

how much

hides in your depths? how will we ever know what
is beneath the water’s water? can I lie
in your undertow
until I glaze over like granite? I am dizzy
on your frenzied fever and ready to see your wrath
poured out.

thrust your fiery children to our shores. let
the clouds rumble ruckuses in your name.
swallow each continent gulp by sour gulp.
take back
what is ours.