Prayer to the Sea

The sea dissolves the bile of battle,

the effluent flow of human soil:

from every starving village on the mountain,

crying in her weaving for her lovers,

sons, and fathers, burying tears

in steep, blood-salted ground;

through every teaming valley, writhing

in fits of angry knowledge,

tearing at itself, clan on clan,

blood to blood, manhood to nationhood,

to genocide,

until a billion strangers' bones

commingle, their essence

ever added to the stream;

to the sump of the cities, seething,

peristaltic, birthing temples ecstatic,

eroded by grief and drowned

at the hands of their own

impatient progeny, sickened

on the distillates of war—

from all these yearning orbs of birth

and death, into the sea

and absolution.

O, dolphin, sweet endorphin,

orphan soul,

enfold us as the fray is joined,

and bear us to the surface of this night.