It’s better than a lie in

Meeting you on the shore of a perfect morning

And watching the wickedly submissive water.

 

Peeling off our winter layers

 

Feeling the sweet bite of the air

Trapped like a cut before the pain comes.

 

We stride in, then - licked

By gentle waves that flash freeze us

Into this embryonic state

 

We’re going for it,

Hands leading the way.

 

Only living once but waking

Day after day to fling ourselves in

And be dandled by the salinity of

Water that is so indifferent

To us being there,

Our rings of laughter

Like silent lint on its back.

 

But some days you wonder

 

When you’re stumbling back onto the stones,

The clumsiness of dry land,

And the frizzante crown of a wave

Playfully taps you on the bottom

 

Or on a sunset evening

When a circus of mackerel

Somersaults from the liquid ochre of the water

Delighting with their random slivers

Of terrified celebration

 

When, on the Autumn Equinox  

The sea is a calm milk,

Balance that takes your breath away

And you carve reverently through it in silence

 

You wonder

 

If it gives us these exquisite memories

These kisses of weightless artistry

To keep us coming,

Meeting on the shores of perfect mornings

Undressing and tumbling into the water like apples

 

To feel us marvelling at its power

A concord playing itself

Its hypnotism

Everything we can never be.