“I’m drowning here, and you’re describing the water!”
– Melvin Udall, As Good As it Gets
I excel at this, if I may say so.
I can turn a shell over and around,
find its magic and malfeasance.
I’m not as good at building things,
organizing armies or solving conundrums.
But I can describe the lay of the beach
and from what direction the warships
should be coming and why that matters.
I can get to the edge of it,
(all the jellyfish be damned!),
my toes plunging into the succulence.
I can turn mistakes into the truth
and wrestle the riptides. I can peck at
the luminous fractals of inbetweenness.
Lamentably, I never have any answers,
but this I can do: explain the floating
lullaby of the waves, the sympathy of the gulls,
our submerged and lovely hair flying
in the murky gloom, kelp endlessly waving
in the sudden shifts of our sinking,
in the braiding tendrils of hope and despair,
the water’s soft light as it streams down
toward the jaunty and heartless rocks,
the heartbreak of losing all the air, water
dazzling and somber and holy and maybe
there is another world down there for us.