Kingfishers

TO CLEFT MY HEART IN 'TWAIN

Can I overcome the smoke and water of the polluted shore? Do I want to leave the water and become a balmy wind drying beads of clarity from her body?

If you are water, can you still drown? The thought is brevity, as
an oil spill which the world adapts to cleanse.
And I am a silvery fish striping alone through her veins,
tickling the silky white ocean-bottom in the hollow of each elbow,
and I can’t resist that gleaming hook that shows through
when she cups my face in both hands and tells me I don’t need to hide.

“But I do.” I protested shortly as I took the bait and tongues of heat danced
limberly at the back of my sticking throat, and I was
eager to be filleted, and to have my shining white birdcage exposed,
revealing the collections of round lumps in my belly,
pearls that always make me purse my lips like a clam, hiding the mother-of-pearl
sheen in a shield of muck, hoping that it will “make my sea level go down.”
This is different though, because you won’t let me swallow.
(My, but aren’t you cruel?)

And my name soon became your quiet, exclamatory mantra,
repeated  over and over, as though repetition changed its sound, 
just as the Moon’s grasp at the edges of water 
bends light into glowing veins on the flawless sand below.
My name was echolocation that found me, whole and gleaming and unique,
as my solemnity took flight like kingfishers from a breaching whale pod,
living mammoths of a sometimes placid, occasionally deadly
ocean of my subconscious apathies. The blue-grey hides created
a tumult that boiled at the pit of my center of gravity,
piping steamy breath up my spine and emptying my lungs
before I could once again breathe, revitalizing aching muscles
that slackened as I collapsed and told you how I love you.
And surrender is sweet, but I’m not over it yet.