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