Oolite for the Ocean Wife
       

If you put up a seawall
you can hold back the sea in that place
where the surge you blame on the Canary Islands
is breaking your heart.

But at the edges where the oolite egg stone limestone
accumulates and the yellow sting rays sleep,
that rubbled beach will erode in its stead.

Deep missing cannot be kept from shore.

It is kelp grown too big for its forest.
Its head floats, its arms float, its legs float
until sea birds find shelter on the mass of you,
but you find no shelter in their wings.

Deep missing must be ripped, its holdfast
cut, its stipe and fronds adrift. Take it.
Wring it with empty-handed questions —

What's the big use of a self?

If there is no big use, how can one live
in a flotilla of half answers?

And what is half of one when all of one is lonely?

Or is it only, Ocean Wife, this question:
When a tide goes out and oolite is naked
and the stipe has heaved itself; will you,
barefoot where seas can bite you,
claim the kelp, cook it as food?

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Copyright © 2014 Paula C. Lowe All rights reserved
from Moo
Big Yes Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission