We spill our bodies, breathless, into the beat

Of the ocean. Choral salt. Land tapers.

You can only regret what your hands

Haven’t touched. But now that’s not true.

Birds fly, a long stroke over the white line,

Receding and returning. My hand cuts the water,

But really I’m reaching for the world,

Its birth. The communal imagining

Of forgiveness takes place here. We can feel it

Throughout our bodies, it rebounds

In our hearts, our ears, our mouths.

We make it true and take the surface

As a gift from the sun, its shining crests

And diamond arrays. Save us.