Today's poem is by Robert Wood Lynn

There is Only One Ocean
       

Everything else, a fiction to make us feel larger.
We tried to draw a border between them once
and for all. To keep water in its own little names.
Then it washed away, our border, and then
my paint can washed away and then so did I.
This is a stupid project to drown for, I said
to anyone who would listen which was no one
because I was alone in the boundary of oceans.
That was long ago. It's so hot the road looks wet
at a distance. Somewhere that ocean lies
in wait for me, which is an aggravating factor
in criminal sentencing. I remember you stretched
out in the sun, your book-shaped sunburn. Calling
my name, unafraid anyone else might hear it.
Like everyone else, we mistook our wanting
something so bad for wanting it forever

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Copyright © 2023 Robert Wood Lynn All rights reserved
from Southern Indiana Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission