Body of Water
(For M.R.C )
Smooth hard and shimmering
Your shoulders are warm boulders
Cooled by a spray of salty air
And golden kelp laid over them
Are your bands of sun-bleached hair
Your pale belly is the dry and toasted sand
Scattered with freckled sargassum
Forming a soft warm basin
For terns to hide their simple nests,
And higher still, cascading dunes
Are your softly sloping breasts
Your hips are gently bowed sandbars
Subtly shaped by the outgoing tides
And around their softened edges
Seawater sparkles and glides,
And just under your belt is the wrack line
That greets my exploratory touch
With a crisp and crunching sound,
Here all manner of tiny treasures
On your endless beach can be found
Your buttocks are two rounded swells
Rolling over the reef, cresting as they rise
Then like white and wild horses,
They crash upon your supple thighs,
Your calves are hearty palm trees
Impelled by the obstinate breeze
To whisper rustling secrets
That collect like sand
On the backs of your knees
And where your strong neck
Meets your avian clavicles,
In the lee of your cliff like chin,
A shapely tidepool is formed,
Lying peacefully protected
And given life by the cool rainbow spray
I would spend hours observing it
If I could all of each summers day
Your cerulean eyes
Are the sunlit shallows
Waves of light sweeping gently
Across their rippled bottoms
And cool refreshment
They promise to give,
But beyond them in the indigo depths
Large and hungry fish live
Your lashes are trembling grasses
And your cheeks are thorny beach roses
To reach your warm willing waters
I must part those spiny dune plants
Like a happily unhurried Moses
And as I float upon your still surface
And let your emerald world embrace me
While playful spirals of sunlight
Dazzle and erase me,
I think to myself how you are,
In all of you my love,
A most beautiful body of water
Alan Ruiz Berman