How Womanhood is Like an Ocean

Womanhood is Like an Ocean

Women have lived before as I live now.
I used to wade at the edges, surf the breaks,
make love to the sound of the sea,
take long walks along the shore —
eyes sparkling with longing.
In sequence bikinis and cotton kaftans,
I admired the cool blues
and rough pearly grains
of the exotic environment.

Then I plunged in like a naiad
dressed in a white t-shirt and jeans
as if trying to save someone. Who?

Time, like a drowning thief in my chest,
stripped me into quarters.
The dark suckled so slowly and sweetly
as I rocked the knocking of newness.
The relentless waves of need emerged.
They pleaded for me to hold them, but
didn’t I need my arms to swim?
Unregenerate compassion began to spread,
even as emergencies overpowered me with urgency.

I was trying to live by holding my breath,
by surfacing as little as possible.
Until I trusted myself.
Until I made my choice.
Until I stopped gasping for air.
Until I stopped aiming my voice.
Until I cultivated a pacific mind.
Until I recalibrated for equipoise.
Until I learned to see through the opaque liquidity.
Until I wiggled free of the heavy garments weighing on me.

The riptide pummeled my bare shoulders
and tore through my open heart.
Until I determined there was nothing to cling to.
Until I drown my fears,
and thrust past the breaks of insecurity.
Until I slipped beneath the whitewash.
Until I found a gentler current on which we could depend.

Surviving, but losing my way,
I learned the waves are the prow.
To relax into Oceanus—
it isn’t just a blending-in,
nor a camouflaging of skin.
It is complete immersion.

In ebb after flow, it is
a surrendering with the tides
in the vast sea of possibility;
undulating with serenity as well catastrophe.

In ebb after flow, it is
a harnessing of the moon
to navigate the poetic ocean of solutions.

In ebb after flow, it is
relearning how to confide in
a diverse and salient community.

In ebb after flow, it is
a transcendental reformation
of Venus, coral beauty, not pedestaled above,
but belonging to the responsive sea of love.