For Carol I am no longer wet with sea spit and eels do not slime amid my rocks. No surging tides churn my waters, my bay lies brackish and still... Once, the quarter moon drew new sea like a comforter to my chin. Warmed, my bed-womb spawned the careless crescent's children: The slithering shore crawlers and silvery night shiners who shivered me with the dance of life across their tidal crib. The tentacled touched my hollows, multipeds tread my inner reaches, finned denizens arched in swirls that showered askew their incandescent scales, And I looked as if I had swallowed falling stars whole and cradled them iridescent in my lap! And I remember the leap of fishes flying for that yellow celestial eye and painting the sky with their rainbows! And my tongues lapping the salt sea marshes, nursing the stilted birds and sea otters, and me! Bursting ripe on the black shore soil! Bringing Life! The More! The More! What am I coming too? I recede, I ebb, I creep across the silenced sounds, the sea tree stumps and matted kelp mounds. I covet fleshless bones, and shells split open without pearls, and cracked conchs sieving out their life onto the sand. The wind whips me not to froth but to bleak desert dunes strewn with emptied exoskeletons. Bring me life, Now! Now! New moon, bright face with white capped veil, Goddess, Queen! Let your yearning tides return to my land lips! Let the sea sands roll to grit beneath your sway. We'll celebrate your beaching, you and I, and hold the world at bay!