Gravity, all my body's water fills the vessel almost
to the top, cells separating themselves, disintegrating;

the waters settle down, and something else in me rises--
I move in two directions. I can't sleep. The heart

floats between this buoying, heavy joy and what is light above it;
it knocks against the breastbone like a boat against its moorings.

What is this? I fall in love again, and not all of me falls. Like air
that was hidden inside the seawater, I've been drinking freedom

all along when I thought I might be drowning--it rises to the head,
the wine or fire of creative surrender, and opens up an emptiness.

The sky is inside! So, too, is this ocean. The merlin and the marlin
exchange glances, two swords that pierce the same skin between.

You have been here all along, so close I did not know you. Now you
precipitate, and the world is manifest, every particle a particular beauty,

the gray salt, the moving waters, and the breath that rushes over everything,
coaxing music from our trembling. I do not know what I'm saying. The beloved

walks the world within me. He climbs into the rickety boat of my heart
and sets it loose on the waters. I will accept no apologies, when Shams returns.

Whirling, resolved.