Wondering Where You Are

Go Darling

Where are you now, my friend?
I set you down on the beach
and watched you, months ago,
walk straight into the sea.

You the one whose shell I scrubbed
with a toothbrush every day
the one I fed with cut-up fish
and the few live sandcrabs I caught.

What’s it like to move from tank to ocean?
Maybe like leaving the world behind will be for me,
moving from a body on tiny earth
to wide awareness in the cosmos.

Are you right with your water world?
I too have a shell and sometimes
I too must stick out my neck.
May you meet your challenges today, my friend.

Your flippers, at first
the size of butterfly wings,
at fifty years will be as big as me.
Like wings they’ll take you flying
through all the global seas.

You will never see yourself apart
from the deeps or the clouds,
or the beach where your egg was laid.
Always you know that where you are
is the right and only place.

I think of you with love,
wondering like a mother
how it goes, if you’re well,
and where in the world you are.

©Susa Silvermarie 2024