and then i knew that there are places: under her, protected by her, owned with quiet jealousy, where rest such living rocks on velvet floors man has never touched--but wait, you do not understand! angular monoliths, large as palaces, all one solid stone: built when Earth herself wrinkles. we snorkel past their tips like gnats to them, and they--stone titans!--themselves are merely pebbles, skipped across the wide, wide, terrifying Sea. how could we understand?
i've heard of days when he was cruel--the Sea in masculinity: heartless, as these terror stories tell--and the unsilent survivor, tale-teller, never tells his name.
but i've seen violence to the Sea as well: fierce motors rend his harsh, terrific hide, forcing great ship-horrors forward; he angers in the churning wake, a scar across his great momentous peace.
suddenly i stand as magistrate: distant ocean stones tell with silent honesty of tranquil sweet intent through time's long smoothing depth; while nearby birds betray their biased witness with the passion of their telling--all is not always warm and bright and well! i weigh the arguments against the distance to those fogged islands far beyond us. twenty miles isn't far, a sailor told me, not on land, but here--oh, here it's far too much. the end of everything could be just there; that is too much.
and so i cast my court-ballot: there is less violence here in sails. i've seen tall sisters glide upon the beautiful Sea-skin; pass in grace and slip along her body, held by wind and buoyancy. yet the Sea himself is never truly she: some else-such persists in all these tender femininities.
and so i cast my court-ballot: there is less violence here in sails. i've seen tall sisters glide upon the beautiful Sea-skin; pass in grace and slip along her body, held by wind and buoyancy. yet the Sea himself is never truly she: some else-such persists in all these tender femininities.
