The Ocean is a Woman

The ocean is a woman.
She is vast and she is changing,
And she does not hide from us
All her forms, all her shades,
All her faces.

But we see her stilled, at times,
And we assume passiveness.
We see calm waters
And, in forgetting her power,
We abuse our own.

We fill her with waste,
Hateful, little things
Unnatural bits and melting scraps
That add and add upon each other
And make a weight in the pit of her.

And though she feels this,
She cannot speak.
She cannot speak
Because she has lost her voice.
We assume she never had one.
We have chosen to forget her sound.
Her waves, her depth, and
Her ability to recount—to remember:

Every anchor dropped,
Scraping in her, digging.
Every spill left running,
Staining her and spreading.
We do not listen
To the moans of the ships.
For they do know,
Even though she is silent.
They feel it as they cut through her
They find the truth of her pain.
In that moment,
When she is opening under them,
She reveals her Spirit.
She reveals her Self.
But these are only caught in passing.

And we see, too,
Far removed on the shore.
We admire her beauty and sadness alike
We gaze, slack-jawed, at her magnitude,
Her magnificence,
Loving her, yet fearing her.

When she reaches for us, we run away
She pushes forward, and we pull back,
Because we remember what we’ve done.
And we are ashamed.

We tell ourselves things.
She is in God’s place, this deep dwelling
Where she may slosh and rumble
And peak all she wants.
Why should she want for more
When she has settled so nicely,
And for so long, in this place?
In this pit of sand, just for her.

Isn’t just one place enough
For a voiceless thing?

Photo Credit: dolbinator1000 Flickr via Compfight cc