cycle of life

the ocean goes all the way back
to the beginning of everything
when in some dark indeterminate time
old gods cast whips of lightning
and rained molten glass

fragments of my old self floated adrift
in lonely still water silence,
among deformed creatures,
hideous face of primeval life yet to
take a familiar shape and learn to speak

now my body and being have merged
into wholeness, into a singular life
the sky flows inverted to the end of time
opposite the cobalt sea

nothing is ever permanent
but ink-stained black
someday,
i will shatter again into many pieces,
flesh and energy shall detach,
in a final act

what relic hardens into ivory
and crumbles to silver dust
shall be returned to its rightful owner,
ancient saltwater of the sea

and a human-shaped warmth
that tells an old tale of life
where once a whole man,
flesh and being

breathed and dreamed on these shores,
his toes licked by the glass waves
in the outline
where departure and arrivals met,
and the past kissed the future looking away
into the oil pastel sun

my warmth that separates from the body
in the final act,
the winnowing of life
my seed, taken from its shell husk
shall be scooped by the upward draft
of the feverish hot winds

into the jet stream currents
in a long, slow circular voyage to the edge
where, as a wise old man whispered to me,
everything truly dies.