Indestructible seabirds, black and white, leading and following;
semivisible mist, undulating, worming about the head;
rain starring the sea, tearing all over me;
our little boat, as in a Hosukai print, nudging closer
to Icarus (a humpback whale, not a foolish dead boy)
heaving against rough water; a voluminous inward grinding--
like a self breathing, but not a self--revivifying,
oxygenating the blood, making the blowhole move,
like a mouth silent against the decrees of fate: joy, grief,
desperation, triumph. Only God can obstruct them.
A big wave makes my feet slither. I feel like a baby,
bodiless and strange: a man is nothing if he is not changing.
Father, is that you breathing? Forgiveness is anathema to me.
I apologize. Knock me to the floor. Take me with you.
- Henri Cole