It was beautiful, wasn’t it, the gray of pre-dawn,
the way the horizon was more suggestion than line?
And it wasn’t too cold, was it, the Pacific, as we waded in,
together, not together, two humans drawn at the same
time to walk back into the salt water that long ago
our ancestors walked out of. Last week, I walked
with an ocean scientist on the shores of the Atlantic.
She watches people on the beach, notices
how many of them could be anywhere, unaware
of their surroundings as they chat, powerwalk or sleep,
and I decided that day I would no longer be that person
who stays dry. So there we were, you and I, walking
into the water. And I thought of other people I know
in places far away who walk into the ocean each day.
A seal came by, sleeking its brown body right before me,
flipping before slipping back into the depths. And many
small fish came, streaking above the waves like thin
silver stones skipping themselves. My heart skipped, too.
Swam deeper in. As if it always knew my evolution
would be this: belonging to the world.
Did you feel it, too, how the current tugged at our skin?
Did you hear it, too, the call to go more wholly in?