Ocean of Love

//ocean of love


May 6 --for chapbook 2
OCEAN OF LOVE
BY ELIZABETH SOUTHWOOD
I’d like to comb the ocean,
hold it up in dripping strands,
reflecting sunset’s green flash
in emerald beads, for you,
make my embrace
of softest cloud-pink sunset,
warmest heavenly blue,
and nighttime star-colored
phosphorescence.
I would with glittering water,
my love, be fragrant
as a dripping rose,
reliable as tomorrow,
soft as a cat’s tail,
sweet as Rachmaninoff’s
Second Piano Concerto,
refreshing
as Trade Winds.
Purest white fog,
like a cool mint bath,
I would use to bathe you,
and display silvery scales
of fish to twinkle for you,
wrap soft gray of fading sky
around you,
quench your thirst,
have the blue of dusk linger
over you, full of parting day,
sweet twilight,
and the early morning
rose of West Coast water
greet you
as we rise to a new day,
and run
to the deliciously
repetitive ocean.
(C) 1997 ELIZABETH SOUTHWOOD
PLATINUM HON. MENTION AUG. 18, 1997