Poetry, Nature

Salty Mother

Sultress of the Sea

She heaves and spits, like a grumpy old lady, then, in the next moment, dances, taught-skinned once again, into her own reflection.

The ocean, she breathes to her own rhythm.

Salty mother, sultress of the sea, in your exhale I taste infinity tickling the back of my throat and beginning to slide down into the gastric fires of time.

You remind me that this moment connects to the next, but that this moment, and the one to come, will never “be” again,

except in our memories which twine through reality like the foamy rings of soma you leave in your wake when your seas recede

into the gulping mouth of the horizon, where purpled remnants of clouds glide into your gaping maw, fighting, then settling,

like the cerulean lick of water melting into the indigo line that divides sea and sky.

You defy description,

all folded glass and sputters of diamonds tossed by an old woman’s hand onto an endlessly smoothing stretch of silk, woven of the past and of the future to garb the mother of time.

Erika Burkhalter is a yogi, neurophilosopher, cat-mom, photographer, and lover of travel and nature, spreading her love and amazement for Mother Earth’s glories, one photo, poem, or story at a time. (MS Neuropsychology, MA Yoga Studies).

Thank you for reading. I hope that you enjoyed my musings and photo.

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Poem and photo ©Erika Burkhalter. All rights reserved.