Waking Beside You

If God is a silent orange fire 
risen from the waters,
breathing miracles 
through schools of blinding shimmerfish
who break upon the shore,

then I am his Indian Summer breeze
scented with salt,
driving peaks of foam
to collide
with those ragged remnants 
of myself reflected from 
the ends of the world.

You are the one warm shore
who absorbs my touch,
who tastes my salt
as it sinks beneath
your smooth skin of sand.
There we nourish, beyond my reach,
soft grasses full of your sighs,
gnarled trunks, branches,
rooted deeply in the richness
of your past.

Birds perch side by side
among the wind-whistled twigs
to gaze upon my waves
filling, pooling in your clefts.
From your sun-rippled 
tide pool bottom,
starfish mirror the infinitude
of last night's sky...

Scott Speck
11/23/2003