Who does not float with the tough weeds,
brown bladders rick-racking inlet shore
stubborn as a banded agate at the waterline
entangled in skeins of oyster thief,
crouches like that ingrown stone
while riding air, gulls strike and feed,
hold sky as their fastness, plummet
to fling shells against the rocks.
A flounce of wavelets chills her,
teases a pout from her stony mouth.
Those fingers slipping from the dock
grasp what mind can't see—
yet—how the world's own body wades
gray shoals of contiguity, slipping through tides,
rising like the daft gulls in an arc
to do the shuddering, unmoored act,
tryst with her sea-soul's provenance.
So a body is borne along, in spite of earthly ropes,
drunk in the cold, cresting waves.
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