WIDE WATER
 

I chirp through my teeth, chasing the dusk-length 
ocean to its slick line down. That I am caught half-
way to next time, I miss the dawn surfacing sea,
tendering leaps over tides that pressing on through
cries of baleen whales. Now the distance from
which the absence nurses me leaves only a bed of
salt, like arms in mad embrace, like last hour’s air
knowing too late how it had cooed into barracks
of thirst. Sculling and falling, I am water paler than
I have ever felled love, a bird buoyed on shoulder
of the sea, whistling that pelagic sail of consolation.
Tonight, I will spice with trade winds and lavish
with fish for life, wings bluing, bill back to see
the edges of things from all sides as if I could ask
for more.