I’m tired of reading about the primordial soup.
About fish birthing tetrapods, and how human blood 
is salt-twin to both Atlantic and Pacific—an 
umbilical cord never cut—endlessly tugging
at lungs and liver, and the literary device 
of oscillating waves and tides as penetration.

I’m really not sure anymore.

I just sang a septet of days on St. George Island, each
one repeating a tempered chorus of sun and surf.
Buffet and Aldean own houses here, but it’s still
the “Redneck Riviera”, more tag holders from
Ohio and Kentucky, than Westchester or DC.

Yes, the sand was new cotton and the turquoise water 
smelled of rebirth. Wading through half-foot waves to cast, 
the sea held me like the ur-Mother that she is, 
though whiting and pompano failed to suckle at my bait—
most of them anyway. 

Thankfully, sand gnats were still in class, 
learning to extract mammal blood through
chitin straws. 

Every afternoon, the wind ran her painted fingers
through my silver hair and each evening, my stomach 
bulged with lower life forms—oysters and shrimp, chased
with fried flounder, I crossed the twenty-five feet of 
hot asphalt to the beach to watch the sun pull a 
greenish sheet of salt water over its drowsy head.

The plague has touched so many—perhaps more 
ocean poems are needed. 

I’m really not sure about anything these days.
                        

This old-growth longleaf—twelve feet 
in circumference—and what bark—
corrugated fingers linked—a completed
jig-saw—each flake part of a whole, 
yet still separate—sticky with 
resin—like family.

Now the turpentine breeze raises 
the few blond hairs left waiting
at the bus-stop of my forearm—the 
sand-variegated bark taking me 
back to our last beach vacation 
on Tybee Island—the girls sixteen 
and twenty—the iodine-sweet 
air of May, and the years ahead,
the lipstick on our smiles.