The Sea

Far from the sea I feel its undertow,
unlock a memory of being swept
into a tide, shaken, emptied, washed through,
till I am only a warm pulse beating
between everything, nothing.
In this place,
the walls I have built to keep the sea out
are crumbling. I step over ruins,
stumble through broken light, hearing somewhere
the hushed swoop and fall of those other walls,
high and green, filled with light, then collapsing
into whiteness. I walk in tension
with the soft pull, there are no horizons,
my shadow a shining blur on the shore's
blue mirror — absorbing, splintered by, white.