The ocean, to put it simply, is its entirety.

Whoever had the audacity to slice it into fifths—

in some Greek-obsessed labelling frenzy—

had obviously never taken a Chemistry class,

and lived their life ignorant to the fact that water,

(a “liquid”, if we’re being scientific),

has no fixed volume or shape.

The ocean could care less about the imposed delineations

that suddenly strike it as having more of a “Pacific” personality type than an “Atlantic” one.

As hard as we try to fold this choppy envelope

into four creased lines, outlining its nanoscopic selves with Ns and Ws,

the ocean resists:

even the schools of submarines,

that shuffle through the seaweed jam and buried tolls, 

cannot sway their obliging dwelling with

muffled chatter of direction or motion or depth.

The ocean resides here, it explores there,

it flows back here once again, and is suddenly there as concurrent

currents, the rips and tides of the brackish blanket

steering particles as treacherous seas for the pirates,

as well as soothing lagoons for the tourists.

Alas, we should not hold butterfly wings accountable for consciousness.

To travel the world, one only needs a toe in the sea:

in an instant, you touch down into Kamino,

endlessly helter-skeltering through whirlpools until you

tap tap tap on Atlantis’ archway,

before you’re basking on the shores of Antarctica

(a glorious tropical getaway, I hear),

you’re both fizzy and calm, heated and cool,

you’re the first drop of precipitation and the last few atoms of a watery puddle.

Anything part of the subaqueous cavern, across time, across distance,

simply put, is its own entirety.

 

--

 

To Wave: When you feel as though the ocean has taken you where you need to go,

choose to stand sandy legged, cuffed trousers

for a moment longer in one end of the waters,

and wherever I am, I will do the same.

From across a beach, a country, the other side of the world,

it might be too far to see,

but for a short while,

as the waves roll in and out,

and in and out,

we will be together again, in our entirety.