Power beyond imagining curls up at my feet
and dances for me supine
upon the face of the earth. So few even believe it
and even among those who do so few
who know it first-hand, even among those
who have been direly in its presence,
felt the spray off rocks, and heart it roar
but hardly notice while they toss
a ball back and forth beside it
in order to keep from being bored.
Maybe they’re taken in by your name
O Pacific Oean! and believe the entrance is
easy, conflict only for those few billion
bipeds prancing about along your shores
for whom conflict is a spectator sport.
If only they knew you!
Are you and the Atlantic one?
(No, I don’t see it…)
Are you two?
(How could you be separate
from each other
or the Indian, Caspian, Baltic…. even
from land-locked salt and dead lakes
even highly diluted salt lakes
called by those who speak English
“fresh water” …. and the rivers, too?)
Just who are you, O Mighty One,
O Vast and Unknown One
Pacific Ocean.
But are you really so different even from us?
Are you? We, who are
mostly salt-water, too….
Are we one with you?
(No, I don’t see how we can be…)
Are we separate from you?
(No. That’s impossible.)
What are the chances that a few molecules
Accidentally bounced into each other
within you, and slowly grew over time
beyond comprehension —
though we can express it in numbers,
we can’t imagine it in any detail)
to become
us?
What are the odds of anything
being here at all for us to
question, let alone we ourselves
be here to ask the quedstions?
What are the odds that we know
anything at all about anything
to any depth
as we play along the shore
trying not to fall in?
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