From the Water

Spin me into the story resting in your bones,
Whirl the stormy past into sea foam until
The moon appears inside your home.
Spin me into life where memories are made.

Put your pen to paper and your paper
To my heart. Sign the oath of salt water
Arising from my birth. Tempt the maker
Of the times that lie within your grasp.

And then . . . know me. Or lock me away
Where treasures are always kept. Lock
The ocean into desert and night into day,
And dust into air perpetually swept.

But, spin me into your story once again,
Spin me into the space beneath the trees,
Into the glowing light of the cattle pen,
And the hungry fire of kith and kin.

Build the walls that hold us with walls
That can’t be seen, with hoof and horn,
And blood and bones, with once upon
The story roofing our being born.

Remember me to know me. See me
To let me go. I am not your life to lose
Nor the one that lets you live, only
The stars calling to the earth with this:

I am the gift of time, as you are, too.
The endless pattern that will always give,
The names we take, the paths made true
By the story that uses us so we may live.

–Shaun Perkins