Your most convincing religion

This might be the place you find it.

This beach, this silver spray,
this morning copper rise,
she and she, drawn in relief,
arms stretched out as wings,
or sails perhaps,

trawling for a leeward breeze,
soaring on some imagined gyre
of light they’ve spun from song and heart
and look and look and up into
the spun light now
as water falls from nowhere
and you watch them cut through air
and turn again to hawk their way
towards you.

You made this.
All of it.

This life, this winking heart,
the music of your ribs and this:

your most convincing religion.

You think yourself as something wide
and stretched and shining,
waiting at the shore
and as they round upon you,
all grin and wings and faux faux flap
and dive you fall back and make yourself
a place to land and rest

and so you find yourself like this:
unfurling as a map,
corners weighted by the stones
and shells she brought ashore from sea.

You find yourself: unfurled
and pinned and grinning,
belly up and laughing on the sand
as she plants her spade beside you,
winks once,
says some whispered thing
about finding what was lost
and marks an x across your chest.