Since morning it’s been raining on the sea,
since morning it’s been graying. Herons
scrape slow shadows across the flats.

There are eyelashes in the morning, little feathers
of seagrass caught between rain and the saltier rain
of the sea. I am darker than the rest, and dry

like wood under a tarp being saved for the fire.
The truest dreams have rain for faces, have surf
for their long rolling bodies. They don’t wake,

stay dignified and a little crazy. They
rarely stray this way, so close to waking.
But since morning it’s been raining on the sea.

I say that I’m dry, but I’m on the edge:
a little balcony with an overhang, feet wet,
barely awake, giving love away.

Inside the room behind me, still
in darkness, sleeps the woman I love, a dream
away, before us the slowly forming day.

I’m giving my love to the sea, a wing, some grasses.
Giving in to rain, and that shifting, wind-drenched
gray. Giving in to dreams I can’t remember

and a certain dryness: this flimsy body something
lives in called “I.” Giving love a flowering and a need:
since morning it’s been raining on the sea.