Without the Sea

The sun's beams penetrate me, with fingers delving deeply beneath the blanket of my surface And the clouds rise up, as bitter as the moon eclipsed sun, only to fall back to earth, with life on the coat-tails of every drop On these benign waters rest the swimmers, whose hearts I hear play the perfect beat and whose skins I caress like a lovers breast, encasing them in champagne bubbles. Yet, they ravage me, savage me. Narcissists seeking the elusive liquors of promised bounty And, though I envelop the rocks at the edge of man's domain, I hold from him the abyssal depths; sparing him from his frailties, and hiding from him my vanities The rivers are my children, so easily breached by the lifeless, upturned fibrous husks of acorn shells,travelling along my viscous exterior. Their David to my Goliath, making fools of all my tributaries. The seagulls flying above me, singing their homages, drain away my windswept salt from holes in their beaks. Like so much brine ejected from salt-encrusted lakes Like a harbinger of bad news, the moons tides recede within me like elasticated yawns, revealing the lost souls of battles ancient; illuminating elysium's reflected glory upon the silvery face of that Lunar watch keeper