Sea Poem

A treasure of time - wide canvas of the sea
Where life was formed from silver gills and a snail’s cry
A universe baptized by fleets of stars 
And the ocean of time 
With its relentless lament 
Carried by seabirds with seashell wings
Skimming across watery crescents  
To follow northern lights to tomorrow
And come back to yesterday
Deep down blink ocean eyes that saw Noah’s rainbow
Fall into the breathing bubbles of life 
And saw jellyfish with opaque tails and ethereal umbrellas
Sinking to nocturnal depths 
Where swim fish with sword teeth
To the deepest dark where Neptune’s children 
Roll about on an ocean floor 
Among Atlantis bangles 
And gold bars encrusted with algae     

Silent, still, spectral, ocean eyes 
That see to the depths of white-ice sands
Where wooden maidens with water-logged breasts
Broke loose from a ship’s bow
And sunk to the decades of a rusted anchor 
Holding time to the ocean floor

Powerful oracle; fathomless ocean born after Genesis
But before Vesuvius wore a crown of Sargasso pearls
In nets webbed across waters
Time was caught and carried 
To scorched sands of other shores
Where the sun closes purple eyelids on twilight 
And opens them to melancholy nights
And to the night mariners who follow 
Misty plumes of moonlight
Where wanders the gypsy moon

by Susan Dale