is inexorably so:

    Anglo Saxons called it

                                Whale's Path

    S'ssh Sssh Sssssh Shhhh

                         Sea shells sound

    In our ears

                 Ssshhuh Ssshuuuh Ssshhuh

    As if forever

                      had no name

    Now

            or millennia from now

    Expanding / contracting

                                  vistas of water

    Always the same as before /

                                           after

    You and I

                 live our little lives

    Primordial ooze and

                                  slime of us

    Drifting seaweed

                             towards oceans

    Are we

              in rotations of waves

    Caught in staunch spirals

                                      of waves' tresses

    Dreaming of water's pull

                                          on us

    Submerged / leaning

                                 towards the sea

    Addicted to walking

                                  on water

    Like sailors and Christ

                                    fish symbolized

    Nine tenths water of

                                  our born bodies

    Nine tenths brine of

                                  our mermaid souls

    Our tears and sweat relate

                                            to the sea

    In deserts we search for

                                        oases of water

    Consign our ashes /

                                at the last

    To rest in the sea's /

                            vast liquidities

    Liberated and libertines

                     We dance / celebrate

                              drink / sing water,

    Reptiles / crustaceans / amphibians

                 metamorphosed in warm blooded

    Animals with sea's gleam

                                           in their eyes.

    At dawn

                 we see our spirits rise:

    Vapor on water /

                            fog on the sea.

    For "We Are The Children

          For Dr. Helen Caldicott

        I. 

          For we are the children of the Atomic Age

          Before our birth our genes were coded and spliced

             Yet the earth, the earth, is beautiful

          For fallout the wind brings that we cannot see

          For nuclear power plants and missiles mapping our trails

             Yet the earth is so beautiful

          For the deception of powerful men we pay and pay

          For their so strange illusion of boundless power

             Yet the earth, the earth is so beautiful

          for bald eagles and other endangered species

          for the tragic magnificence of all the doomed

             Yet the earth is beautiful everywhere

          For people born today who will not live too long

          For the medical profession which has no enduring cure

             Yet the earth is beautiful still beautiful

          For how we turn to flora and fauna for healing and love

          for how those men's vision wins out over the earth

            Yet the earth is still beautiful

          How we dream again of her green vegetative hair

          How they dream of an abstract ghostly heaven

             Yet the earth, the earth, is beautiful

          For our irradiated food and pesticide-drenched crops

          For our vast indulgences that led to these disasters

             Yet the earth is still beautiful

          For foolish men's dreams of escaping to the stars

          For their deadly machinery and all its effects

             Yet the earth, the earth, is beautiful everywhere

          for how the polar caps are really melting

          for our prophecies of falling into the sea

             Yet the earth, the earth and sea, are beautiful

          For the thousands of species that have already died

          For us who would like to survive---

                  For the earth / sea / sky are beautiful, so beautiful

          II.         

          For how nature's subtle patterns resemble one another

          How fireflies mirror the distant stars

          And Hindu palaces look like children's sandcastles

          And the sea contains butterfly patterned fish

          For how black bats spread darkness with their caped wings

          And light and shadow coruscate in a dance

          For how shadows sew the living and dead together

          And spirals connect us--fetuses, snails, corpses--

                     in the world's coiled womb

          For how the willow's slender leaves drop like tears

          And foxgloves, little delicate bells of dawn,

                     sway to the gong of the wind

          For how mountains are molded like breasts

          And cowparsnip umbels delicate as grandma's white lace

          And coleuses might have been daubed by artists' brushes

          For how bird of paradise have beaks sharp as feathered birds'

          And hummingbirds, fishes, frogs and stars share in the

                       world's iridescent luminescence

          And for how the trees' leaves are their mantle of hair

          That they shed and grow, grow and shed and shed and grow again

          And for how cat, zebra, raccoon and tiger lily

          Are marked by the same winddriven eternal fingers

          For how our eyes sparkle like jewels, illuminating darkness--

          Brown for the earth, blue for the sky, green for the sea

          And for how our bodies contain arteries of water

          Like the earth its net of oceans, lakes and rivers--

                   Its profusion of life sustaining blood

          For how the sun rises each morning on its own legs

          And disappears each night into a mesh of crimson darkness

          And for how the moon trails the sea after it

          Like a bride a billowing wedding train

          For how fresh snow is like froth of foam capped waves

          And for the rainbow painting arches in the sky

          And for how we are here today in the flesh

          And for how soon there may be few left like us

          For we--we are the children--of the Atomic Age

          For all this and for the earth, the earth,

          Which is beautiful, still beautiful everywhere we go