Under the huge, oily, half-barnacled rocks,
my sister and I fished every Saturday for crabs.
We lived to see them foam wildly at the mouth,
their curved claws clacking like pinking shears
against the fabric of their fear, their nubby eyes
black-stemmed and blind, searching for ours.
We hated and loved them zealously, as we did
the sand sharks who wore grim faces on their backs;
the jellyfish, with their colonies of purple barbs;
the helpless grunion dying in phosphorescent glory;
the riptides that, over the years, carried us
miles from shore. All the dangers of the ocean
beckoned to us back then, just as our mother called
out our sweet names, so as to spell us into being.
It was danger we thought we longed for,
more than love; for love seemed always dry-docked,
a dead end, whereas the sea-slung wind
was heavy with mystery as it swept in whiffs
of pirate ships, bloodied rags, sirens, and tar.
Those nights we slipped out my sister’s window,
climbed down the wooden siding of the second floor,
alighted on bicycles, flew off in our nightgowns
down the empty esplanade to King Harbor;
those nights we climbed the breakwater, leaping
like ghosts in darkness from rock to rock,
as waves boiled over our toes: we had to hold on
to each other’s waist to keep from diving in.
Leap, leap the spindrift spat out at us,
the thrumming swells undulating their bellies
over the closed womb of the blackened water.
Something in the fast-moving clouds overhead
made us listen to our own breathing; something
vast and ageless, like an old grief ever singing
its salt in our veins: the ocean calling us home.