The Sea is Sentimental

The sea is sentimental,

it rolls its pearls of memories 

to deposit them on coastlines,

to be discovered in a myriad of chance sightings.

As if someone, perhaps you, might stray across them,

and your gaze settling upon one, you might raise it up

to the sky and ask it to name itself.

You may decide that it's a whalebone, this memory, and scrutinised,

see that it retains the transcendental spirit of a Leviathan.

And if you clasped it, tight in your fist,

you might summon the blood beats of moments of song 

and the pound of the compression of atmospheres of deep water.

Or perhaps you will conclude that it is more fragile: 

the remains of a fish tail, that it still contains a herring's sorrow 

bound to the separation from the united body of a shoal of silver darlings.

You might squint at it, lift it to the eye of the sun and imagine

that you can still view fractions of the algorithms 

of essential functions sleeping in its scales.

The sea is sentimental, 

it drifts and breaks up brittle shells in waves 

that hiss upon the sand

where some new hand might find one

and remember its lost shine.

As if someone, perhaps you, might stoop,

stretch out an arm and wonder

at the nacreous lines and folds of its delicate form.

And here we all wish to be found,

to be held up to the light undiminished,

here, we ghosts who shatter paled on shorelines

in search of release.

 
Image from pixabay.