The Wave

To give you back this wave
I would have to give back
the black
spaces

fretted with film of spray,
darker and deeper than the mind
they are emblems of

Not only the creator fury
of the whitest churn
the caldron of all life
but the blankness underlying

Thinking of the sea I think of light
lacing, lacing the water
the blue knife of a radiant consciousness
bent by the waves of vision as it pierces
to the deepest grotto

And I think of those lives we tried to live
in our globed helmets, self-enclosed
bodies self-illumined gliding
safe from the turbulence

and how, miraculously, we failed