How the Ocean Exhales

Amorak Huey

Nature, March 2013

I imagine, as I say goodnight and drive away,

the couple left on the sidewalk glad at my parting,

pleased to find themselves alone —

though it never was or will be otherwise.

I imagine the turning toward, the embrace,

the first few drops of a new rainfall.

All circulation is a system: predictable, purposeful.

We are in a period of deglaciation,

deep-water masses are mutable,

and what sinks to the ocean floor

grows restless, releases

whatever it had trapped in shallower spaces.

I imagine again the couple: how she holds him —

how they raise their faces to the sky,

what falls, what rises.