It is you whom I love –
You the elusive, who gathers in shadows
and offers the comfort of hollows on gravelly hills –
You, the dweller in older and cleverer voices, and
the child’s eyes piercing the quiet
with a sweeter silence.
I know, now
not to inhabit abstractions so much as the fresh chill
of this exact wave –
You in precision, the butter-blue curl
and bitter-cream furl of the fall
into indigo
fathoms
and still it is
You, swift and soft
in the splay of a luminous fin-adorned swimmer
who nudges and rescues the plummeted –
pulsing them up
spluttering
into the light of the sun.