Ferry
There's a look about a girl of twelve or so,
a swell of tides testing channels,
the smell of sea and sea-weeds, waters
tentative, tenacious, pressing out the flesh.Rocking as the boat rocks, she circles the deck,
she makes a dance of it - hiding in her hair as she passes.
What has she to do with a stranger's stare
'How could you have been a girl.'What can I tell her? - lifted as she is to this shape
without a say, without a choice except to be it: sea-stuff.
It seemed a lesson for another species, when I resisted
all that flowing through me.Angel Island, March 73