words

on the water we are magnificent
like winds blowing over the surface
for miles and miles, never lacking,
never losing a moment from hesitation.

the sun does not set but melts and drips
and drains in to the water a golden mess
and then this is how the night is made,
from burning drops of blinding enigma
comes a darkness in the sky
and then the water is turned to champagne
in the waves we make stranded in moonlight.

and in the morning, the sun congeals slowly
and through great effort to bring itself
up from the quiet depths of its liquid rest
it is born again and rises newly round
evaporating the loose wetness of its slumber,
burning and ubiquitous, solemn,
the word of god if god were a word.

on the water we are as the sun
burning and fading, rising and falling
by some temporal mathematics, a circadian algorithm
we are not to understand but simply follow
as a clock from dusk to dawn and on and on.

-S.C. Martinez