The Ocean, Genevieve

If you were the ocean you'd be blue like your dress
and green, too, like emerald, or limes pale and unripe
and you would shine golden, Genevieve, like your hair or sunlight
melted through kitchen windows.

If you were the ocean you would rock and sway
in rhythms tight like symbols and snare or a heartbeat
and in rhythms beatless, too, like wind with timeless synchopation,
a murmur, distant, complex.

If you were the ocean Genevieve you would sleep in stillness
quiet in midnight hardors or an isolated afternoon inlet
and maybe float on yourself and slumber in your own depths
silent and secret.

If you were the ocean you would storm, Genevieve, like a war,
and you'd recruit the sky and fire and god and you'd heave and
burn like a water bonfire beautiful and sublime
with energy emotional and honest
like a thousand adolescents weeping or a baby being born.

If you were the ocean you would teem, wouldn't you Genevieve,
endless with fish and plants and plankton and
reef and scales and flesh and eyeballs and
tentacles like transluscent shoestrings, beautiful things
breathing, eating, feeling, and reproducing, reproducing, reproducing.