Meno Mosso *

You rode the wave today
and soared into a balance –
you found a way to pray
as if no challenge
were more quizzical
than any working
of the muscularly physical –
arms and shoulders jerking

up and setting down
each load of matter
through the air to ground:
one small shatter
of a Christmas ball –
imperfect lift to heaven –
a likely sort of fall
to heed at fifty-seven –

but oh, the ocean swelled
and you were there for it –
you swam, dived, dwelled
in some rare air in it –
amphibiously graced –
you breathed through gill
and lung, and raced
to join and sunder, spill

and fill a newer sea
than you had any notion
you could ever learn to be –
this wide conflated ocean
of your past and present:
oh, ten hours hence,
how strange and not unpleasant –
full of some odd sense –

you feel – some yapping dog
of sex still goads –
but pat him on his head, and hog
your peace: your loads
have been unloaded: listen
to a new concerto grosso
whose fluidic glisten
softly bids you: meno mosso.


*less movement