Poetry Wednesday

Winnowing

You were sitting naked on the rocks
and I
was walking down,
pausing halfway down,
and the sea was saying things,
and your shoulders were very white.

What the sea was saying
was in your ears
and I
was making no sound,
staggered on the rocks
and quiet.

The way we knew each other,
there on the edge of things,
was draining
and I
felt like water through a sieve
and you were water too.

It bled on the edges,
your whiteness,
into colors I couldn’t name
and I wanted to name them,
to count the colors of your going
and
I was the water.

Annnnnnnnd, something not-mine, which I love:

maggie and milly and molly and may
by e.e. cummings

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles, and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea.