Offering on A Rainy October Night

You Can Learn From A Tree How To Exist In Ecstasy

My friends are so in love they don’t hear
the tin can rattle of our dinner conversation.
Even though I know I should look away
as they stand up from the table to embrace,
I can’t.
I balance on the edge of this island I’ve chosen
as the bride and groom drive away.
They have no shame, but I do, looking at the
bottles of wine on the table and thinking
maybe just one drink would be OK.
In addition to wine, there is starlight.
The table is laden with grilled chicken
and charred zucchini, left on too long
because the cook was so excited to dance,
he forgot we expected to eat.
I want to say the food was divine
as my friends merged with the dune grass
shivering with the first touch of the breeze off the ocean,
and it may have been,
but all I tasted was the ashes as it blew away,
taking my parched tongue with it,
leaving me with no way to speak the words
I was too afraid to invite to the table.
Words that might have set my heart free
from the lead sinker dragging it into the deep
where no one could see its wounds
except the bottom-dwellers
who had somehow found out a way
to generate their own light.
A tree makes food from light,
but I’m not a tree, I’m a ghost
haunted by the waves caressing
the beach on this sultry August night
where I wish someone would randomly appear
to seduce me, so I wouldn’t have to
honor the call of the ocean
who is demanding I get up from the table
and humble myself to its need.
I knew this day would come soon
because I’ve listened to the waves for so long
I don’t hear them.
Birds twitter in the beach roses to the beat of the moon
as it ripples on the break.
I try to look away, but I’m drawn by instinct
like horseshoe crabs on the one full moon tide in May
when they can breed.
My friends are fused now like the roots of two trees
who have grown together in a forest that has always
met all of their needs.
They have no fear they’ll be torn from the earth by a hurricane.
Their bodies are broken levees.
They drift downstream, calling out for me to join them,
but I cling to the rooftop, still believing some unearthly force
is going to drop down from the stars to rescue me.
As I watch them drift away, I realize what the ocean wants from me.
Its voice pours through the hole in my heart which blossoms
as the scabs that protect it are torn away.
Do you remember how the breeze ran its fingers
up and down the curve of your waist?
Do you remember the way sunlight tastes,
the salt on his skin you scraped clean like a cat
until all your edges were as smooth as the stones on the beach
beneath the bluffs, where the waves thundered
with the force inside the seed?
Do you remember how, after, he brought you a glass of water
and held it to your lips so you didn’t have to get up to drink?
Do you remember how you saw god in your own face
when you looked in his eyes, your reflection so open the world fell away?
Do you remember the joy of sinking into the ground
in full knowledge it would someday be your grave?
Do you remember what it feels like to hear only the waves?
Do you remember knowing that even when the time came for you
to drop your leaves, deep inside your heart you’d still have
the root of this memory,
stored away for the day ocean cried out,
so tired of breaking.