Entangled

 

A sea nettle glistens at the tideline,

like a fragment of ocean  

left among the rocks

or a resected organ, set apart

on a tray.

 

There is a reason it calls to you

 

as you study it, wishing 

for surgical gloves, and this life,

this patch of separated

sea

examined

from a measurable distance.

 

Can you feel your own pulse?

It is the same, yours and 

this, a sunlit swell.

For you also move an ocean 

within you, 

drenching each particle, 

spinning as one.

 

Nothing is free of this entangling.

Even at your lowest tide,

when life scatters across stones, 

you belong to the profusion

of all things.

 

Come closer.

Step into this creature, your own.

Receive this moment in abundance.

There is nothing to earn

or to prove, just 

the moving 

 

as a whole — 

now like the tide,

now as a part 

contracting, then relaxing, 

squeezing the heart of this sea 

 

until you know each wave 

as a tumbling caress,

as sunlight on skin

unbroken,

complete,

awash —

a correlation illuminated

in every-thing.