How the sea loves itself,
its foam fingers lifting
then swooping down
to tickle its blue arms—
how it loves its own silky skin, goes mad
for the taste of its own salt-blood.
Unassimilated animal
that won’t let Earth go
but covers it, covets it
like a dragon its emerald egg.
How fierce and tender
its heaving and sliding
and the voice of each waterdrop
singing an alien serenade
of monotone crashes
and tenor warbling.
It is a hymn, I think,
a beastly prayer to the moon,
the only thing the sea loves
more than itself.