VOLUTE

When they walk ancient beaches, cliffs
of layered sandstone, they never seem to understand
that we are the shapes of  waves,
that the rhythms of the tides mold all that matters.        
They call us fossils without seeing the curl 
of the fiddlehead fern, the folds 
within each seed and vessel. All of it spirals −
yet not fast enough for them.

They forget the Moon, that conjurer of light, ovum of stone 
that draws up the oceans, pulls helix through bone.
They overlook snails as pictographs of waves while shells 
coil around the energy of the world. Oceans swell 
in all that swirls this volatile möbius path. 

All is volute.

Let us watch the Moon rise,
raise tides, turn them over.

Let us witness
the whirling embrace between
orb and ocean, the kiss
as bubbles race upward to hatch.

From Wisconsin Review Volume 50:1, Fall 2016
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