Must I stop loving

the word because meaning is

forgotten as fishing net, sunk low, slowly

becoming sea floor? Mean once meant shared by all—

in common. Now we’ve narrowed

ourselves stingy & unkind.

Can I cast a spell with this small net

of words & pull-in a more generous tide? And if I

throw my whole self into the sea of language what of my human children,

each separate world of them, rolling in this globe? What of this one

body that held them, for a time, wrapped in skin

the color of sand?

The waves leave us marks

on the shore, scrawling some message

in a long-ago tongue. I can’t decipher water’s momentary script

though my skin bears the trace of its flow & ebb, rivulets

of memory left behind from the years

I was both sea & shore.

Once upon four times, I filled,

a world of water, an inland sea full of life,

other than myself. My body made common—shared. Self & other

forever thrown into question & tied. Perhaps to love

is to tremble at the unmaking of my self &

choose to be unmade anyway.