For Joanne
I listen to the surf below my window,
it’s a love song, a lullaby.
I marvel at the infinite billions
of hydrogen and oxygen molecules swirling
in that ocean, and the water in me doing the same trip
on a smaller scale.
I spin my prayer wheel
in homage to the millions of intriguing species
some not yet discovered.
I am in awe of microscopic plankton,
amazed at the twenty-ton whale shark
and I embrace respect, gratitude for this watery expanse.
My body is a drop in the ocean,
yet we share a kinship like loving sisters.
More than half of me is water,
my cells, tissues, joints silently call to the waves
and I return home to the millennia
when we were part of the ocean.
—
Elise Kazanjian is a San Francisco poet/writer who spent her childhood in Tian Jin, China. Her poems and essays have appeared in Fog And Light: San Francisco Through The Eyes of the Poets Who Live Here (2021); Marin Poetry Center 2021 Anthology; New Millennium Writings; and the San Francisco Examiner among others. She has worked at Sunset Magazine; J.W. Thompson Advertising; KQED; CCTV, in Beijing, China; and as a pawnbroker. She has a collection of over 100 fountain pens and mechanical pencils.
