Vow | The Poetry Foundation

It will be windy for a while until it isn’t. The waves will shoal. A red-legged

cormorant will trace her double along glassy water, forgetting they are hungry.

The sea will play this motif over and over, but there will be no preparing for it

otherwise. Water will quiver in driftwood. Sound preceding absence,

a white dog trailing a smaller one: ghost and noon shadow, two motes

disappearing into surf. And when the low tide comes lapping and clear, the curled

fronds of seaweed will furl and splay, their algal sisters brushing strands

against sands where littleneck clams feed underwater. Light rain will fall

and one cannot help but lean into the uncertainty of the sea. Bow: a knot

of two loops, two loose ends, our bodies on either side of this shore where we

will dip our hands to feel what can’t be seen. Horseshoe crabs whose blue

blood rich in copper will reach for cover, hinged between clouds and

sea. It will never be enough, the bull kelp like a whip coiling in tender hands,

hands who know to take or be taken, but take nothing with them: I will marry you.

I will marry you. So we can owe what we own to every beautiful thing.

Source: PoetryNow (2019)