The Day of My Return

Do you know what the sea has done to me?
Some investment that I made, a promise to return

So many things have happened since then,
a life moving like a riddle and the small discoveries
only revealed looking back
That summer when I splashed in the salted pools
and plundered the beaches with pail and shovel,
bursting colours in a child's hands
My mother lost me one day so that
I would remember

Do you know what the sea has done to me?
A love of what is real, the tactile and the tasted

I knew to spit out the salt and bury my legs
in the wet density of endless sand.There are more stars
in the heavens, Carl Sagan once said
It is new every day, that is something,
life eager to begin again with its eternal blessing,
the briny organic and the table is set

Do you know what the sea has done to me?
The shattering of light on the black water

Precious stones without the hard matter,
how the dying sun pours its copper and gold
then flings it all against the sky
There is always passing-by gulls,
boats going here and there, countless epiphanies
when you can't see the bottom

Do you know what the sea had done to me?
Showing me the otter in Oak Bay

Its lifted head wanting me to see the glossy
stretch of him, as fluid as any stream
And the driftwood heaved and alone
has a memory of wooded hills and storms
I watched children poke a jellyfish
along the tideline, and the curious crows
not too far away knew better

Do you know what the sea has done to me?
It wanted me to go away so that I would love it more