Because I cannot swim

Went island hopping on Maundy Thursday.

Look out onto the liquid sapphire breaking
Against the seacraft's whited hull,
    the marble swells
Glinting in benign tropical sun,
Scintillating, spurred to dance by unheard song.

Look out into the vast, consuming blue,
Azure hills by unseen children rolled.
Go, get up; see the tallowy tides —
And wonder: are you invited or repelled?

Decide:
To behold only —
Or to taste and
Bleed?

In the pendulous silence, the quiet thrill
Of that moment on starboard edge,
You see and think everything, and likewise
See and think nothing, peering into the void.

You breathe, forgetting all rationality — jump!
You drown in a microcosm
Of almost savage wonder, thinking nothing
Of thinking, for everything's paused.

Then as the impalpable tide above you rolls,
Waves of panic wax
And pound your plywood hull;
A fiery terror siezes your paper heart.

You scramble and flail to climb up and feel
Familiar footing — and the thought crushes you:
That you cannot calm yourself in the sea,
That you cannot control the current,

That you cannot swim or see underwater,
For fear of stinging salt and of a vice
And of a death delivered by an unfeeling element;
That you are a little child, lost.

You have no power in yourself
To rein in the waves
Nor even power to reign in your
Inner chambers, to know "Be still, my soul."

You are frail (so you think),
You are dust:
What are you doing, you wonder,
In water?