The Creations of Water and Light

At night when the ocean is full

of its own created light, the luminescent eel,

the manta ray, the swimming-together

minions of the small. At night

when we are carried in the waters of this world

that existed before any of the gods

created earth-light or winged creatures,

I look through the relative darkness

and see the fire of plankton around your body

in the pure grace of shining light.

Fire and water are two elements

unlikely to join. Still, one sometimes comes of the other

as when the body creates its waters

from the fire of sexual yearning

and when the ocean reveals her light-bearing creatures

in the silken water that carries us.

At night when the ocean is teeming with the eggs

some creature has entrusted to the sea,

I remember how the body goes into itself,

at that moment between breaths

when it seems the tide of the body might pull away

before it comes back again. In the human body,

it is said, the gods of the ocean live below the navel

in the muscles that move like waves of their own accord

and when the bodies are pressed together,

skin against skin,

we can say we remember how ocean was formed,

we can say we knew it at the beginning of time,

the first element when something like gods

or makers fell into each other, cell by cell,

cell to cell,

and became something newly created,

boundless and light.