It will be the ocean that gets me
in the end, all and always the ocean
— kindly, with none of the biting hunger
of a breaking wave. I do not know
the body of water but it will be calm
as it often is at dusk.

I do not know the body of water
but the body of water knows me.
Even here far from the coast
it pulls on me like riptide
to return, return, return.

It will be calm, it may be dusk
along the Gulf when the oil rigs light up
one by one and sting rays slip shadows
past the sandbar, ghost crabs emerging
to write their own sideways lines.

I chose these as my witnesses:
Also of the ocean, also at home in the tides,
also tasked with returning and returning
as the red-globe sun falls below
the horizon with a sharp
green flash.