Emerging

ocean painted into a vanishing hue of blue, 
glistening yet absorbing into itself, 
welling onto those frayed lengths of rope, 
tangled creels and the fading boxes from fisheries 
abandoned of their purpose 
like a marooned man on a forgotten shore. 

Lingering between these objects
the tussled blades of grass
between oil and water, 
these new bodies 
that do not expire;
vessels with the unshifting aspect of mountains. 

That familiar plastic container.
you glanced down upon, 
deprived of its inner sunshine, 
like a dystopian chrysalis in which the flower is illusion 
and the womb of this blossoming 
and now faded vessel appearing 

without its initial laminate appeal, 
emptied of content 
and fossilized into something that cannot decompose, 
destined to remain 
a reminder of impermanence 
of the fleet life that passes within.

That flood of light upon the shore 
opening the petals of the earth into a new season. 
The sea and coast meet one another 
after the banks and paths have been broken 
into tiny crevices. 
water now trickles in tiny rivulets as in a microscopic valley. 

Ants whisper to one another about the opening soil, 
that land that has opened into a new landscape, 
with people overhead eyeing their culture's visible sheddings 
and cast-off innumberable items with forgotten or defunct purpose, 
new unknown landscapes and shelters for things unseen 
yet containing that insect presence 

with its pheromones 
and trails of simple yet compelling language. 
Those invisible trails of living in quiet 
and dazed movement, 
not reptilian and brusque, 
but feeling tentatively out of the finer particles of soil.