Water

By: Marta Maresco

AUGUST 8, 2023 

WATER

I am a creature of water

a life form that emerged from the sea

more than half my substance composed of water.

I see myself crawling out of the primordial ocean

a sea turtle, wearing a protective shell

or floating in on a scallop shell surfboard

upright like willowy Aphrodite

wondering — in what place have I landed?

Perhaps I should return to the deep…

Water holds me,

Lets me float free of gravity’s pull.

Moving rhythmically

on my side, my back,

or prone with breast-stroke, butterfly,

and finding stillness in the dead man’s (woman’s) float

wondering with childlike curiosity

is this how it would feel

to be suspended for eternity

in the waters of the cosmic ocean?

Marta R. Maresco