“… the sea makes moan,” James Joyce
All day the sea makes moan
and throws itself against the land.
This is not the wind, you say,
this is the water
throwing itself
from Japan.
All day the water throws itself
from side to side around the world.
The radio tells of beaches
torn in the Carolinas,
Gulf of Mexico
and down in
L.A.
All day our love makes moan
and I am a young girl
in the heavy moaning sea
I swam in before I knew
the body of a man.
When I knew the body of a man
I never again went into the sea.
But now I know when you are gone
and I am old
and lovers come no more
I will take my body again
Into the deep, moaning sea
In: Psyche Drives the Coast, Empty Bowl, 1990.