Salt Water

Salt Water

And then

this memory of a Paul Simon

song playing on a Bose

radio while

the cool winds blew in from

the creek reminded

us that saltwater isn’t a dream

instead something so magnificent

and potent and without

a nation or an identity, but

instead this great bouquet

of everything splendid in the skin

it seeps through, the grass and your flesh

and the moon hanging so low

it isn’t clear whether it’s above

the water or underneath it.

This is how I imagine life should be

a collection of detached memories inspired

by the colorful and artful moments

of the world at large, trying to think

of your friends being good

and doing good

while the night meanders and the mornings

smile, the curve of the earth twirling

around an axis of fate and bone,

muscle and sinew

thunder and roaring ocean breaks,

rustling leaves deep in the forests

of our lingering memories

the common dense of it all.