Sea Change

I write you on the tongues of bells
I write you on the broken plates
I write you in a stormy hand
A cursive culled from gulls and ampersand

It'll look like underwater
It'll feel warm like Alabama
To come bearing gifts of flood
To douse our desert borders
Gifts of Bering landbridge
To walk our sealegs homeward

O' the tired that feet and bones can grow
On a road paved over undertow
O' the lengths that grace will make me go
Are as great as eight grey whales full-grown

You're the prayer I wouldn't dare intone