Song of the Gulf of Boni (Bone) by Maj Ikle

Why do you not know what separates us

When you presume to name me

After your body parts?

To then exist unseen

As if transparency

Means no personality

When…For all your industry

Dirting on my shores

You’re stuck in the shallows

Where mine shape yours

Licking and rinsing you clean

Salty balm for your festering sores

Feeling what you should see

Bone solid is not the only way to be

Still…You bathe in my edges

Because you daren’t

Go all the way down to deepness

Where spiral gyres move and shift

Too much pressure for you

Skin child, rude chimpanzee

Clinging to crusts

When you could be

Symbiont grooming me

Instead …You brand with numbers

“Eighty miles long, thirty wide”

Avoiding the fact I’m the majority

I’m not even a me

We are a body

Planetary blood coursing

Adventure energy resourcing

We are water

Ceaseless sea

..

Poem from recently launched Beautiful Dragons anthology Not a Drop-oceans of poetry