Grooming my self-image
in the mirror-pond
laughing self-consciously all the time
until the day that I shed my body.
And step into those deeper waters,
without the need for air.

Yesterday was when a simple charge of moisture-laden air,
a wafting chill carried me over
to where my foremothers/fathers (as much as yours)
sat in the translucent days of innocence
before the skin was colored
when the lonely gulp and slosh of paddle in water
or the snap and tug of sail and rigging
were their only companions.
The journeys of discovery
sagas lost to history, retained as simple facts
without the flesh and hue of breath in the midsummer air,
and the Pacific calm
and all the details that connect us to the forever past and the forever future
without these, we move in shared blindness.