Monomyth
—And it would be in he for whom the moon
pulls strongly on each salt cell
of the blood,
in whom the rush and roar of distant tides
echo through inner brine cathedrals
like a conch shell’s memory
of ocean,
that comes the gull’s cry,
and so to stir from sleep
and set out sightless into darkness
to follow onward the sea-smell and roaring
as the roaring grows ever louder,
where, finally,
at the roaring’s edge—
first spark of dawn
glowing faintly from within
the womb of primordial mist,
the inchoate light
suffusing each tiny droplet
with its awakening—
then, crossing the threshold
into the kelp-strewn amniotic vortex,
guided by currents
of instinct
through hoary spume-wastes and barnacled knuckles
of rock and reef-wrack,
the sea-slick spermatozoan
breaching and diving through breakers,
wriggling out past the crashing
and chaos,
nestling among calmer, undulant folds
of water
to wait
for the mist to clear,
for the light to grow warmer and brighter
until, across rolling gray whale-backs
of waves,
scattered golden pools
of pulsing sun—
then a great swelling from beneath,
surging skyward,
drawn up as though by an unseen hand,
sucked into the churning virescence,
flung forward
but not falling,
instead melding with the motion
with a balance imparted by months
of patiently dwelling in
moon-rhythm—
with exhilaration accelerating
along a seemingly preselected path
towards the rapidly closing water-eye,
emerging
from the tube,
spit out
head-first
in a heaving exhale of spray,
and, with the bittersweet knowledge
that the end is all too imminent—
all that effort put forth
if only for a few seconds
of weightless forever—
feeling the swelling cease beneath,
the buoyancy sink
with the roaring
into silence.
And then to turn
and turn again,
and drift
while the tides,
O the tides—
the tides curling in over
the tides going out under—
perfect sideways figure-eights
beneath
this solitary black speck,
lightless star
waiting
to be borne again
