Skinless

I am not watching waves;
I become them.

In every knuckle of white and in
the dark falling caverns of tight water -
I am.

I am taking off the walked steps in sand,
the work worry, world worry, wife worry,
taking it off, off like a sheath.

I look back at this intangible skin I have shed
and I see the poor spirit,
the weave and the heft of it,
the condescending consciousness of self.

It falls;
from underneath these tonnes and tonnes
of pent up, locked in grit and grief
I emerge.

Now the water holds me in a thumping eye.
It doesn't fawn over my
light, light self, it simply calls me in a bass rumble.
So I go to it.

A finger and foot and hair uncombed -
they all join the sea.
And I am not watching waves, I am them.

I am tall and bold like them; I am fierce.
I sluice and drift like them,
I am the water reed,
I am the wren fishing,
I have no name.

I am a pulse, under a headwind.