Because we can’t separate one from the other,
these forces bigger than us or our city
or almost the planet. Because the wind blows
and the moon shifts closer and farther
like an indecisive child, and in the end,
won’t something so fluid take any chance to move?
We are chest-deep in the bay, which is not cold
but not yet warm on the cusp of summer.
Your sun-blond hair beneath my chin.
Your small, lean self that, if I opened my arms,
would sweep off to the freighters on the horizon.
Because, baby, turbulence can’t be avoided,
so we find ways to rise and fall and not go under.
Here in the sea, I will show you all I have learned.
—
Jocelyn Heath is an Associate Professor in English at Norfolk State University. Her first poetry collection, In the Cosmic Fugue, came out in November 2022 from Kelsay Books. Other creative writing has also appeared in The Atlantic, Crab Orchard Review, Poet Lore, Sinister Wisdom, Flyway, and Fourth River. Her book reviews have appeared at Lambda Literary, Entropy, The Lit Pub, and elsewhere. She is an Assistant Editor for Smartish Pace.
