Unsteadily, I stand against the wash <br />Flooding in, climbing thigh, waist, rib-cage. Turning, <br />It sweeps me, breaststroking, out on its swift <br />Sudsy withdrawal. Greenly, a wave looms; <br />I duck beneath its thundering collapse, <br />Emerging on the far side, swimming hard <br />For the more manageable, deeper waters. <br />How the sea elevates! Pausing to tread it <br />And feather-kicking its profundity, <br />The swimmer wears each swell around his neck, <br />And rides the slopes that heave through him, <br />The running valleys that he sinks across, <br />Part of the comprehensive element <br />Washing as well now the Galápagos, <br />The bay at Wenchow, the Great Barrier Reef. <br /> <br />Why, then, this ache, this sadness? Towelled off, <br />The flesh is mortified, the small hairs standing <br />Among their goose bumps, the teeth chattering <br />Within the skull. A brutal century <br />Draws to a close. Bewildering genetrix, <br />As your miraculous experiment <br />In consciousness hangs in the balance, do <br />You pity those enacting it? The headlands' <br />Blunt contours sloping to the oceanside, <br />Do angels weep for our folly? Merciful, <br />Do you accompany our mortality <br />Just as, low to the water, the pelican <br />Swiftly pursues his shadow down a swell?<br /><br />Timothy Steele<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/pacific-rim/
