Poetry Written Works

Clear Water by Clara Bailey

The waves are crashing against us now, love
As we stand, feet in the sand, despite our lives
Our hands suspended over the water, our names:
The knife-blade sun slicing white through the blue
The air tastes and whips as the open-plain thunderstorms
Of a Bradbury book 
The grasses shake in the growing wind
I feel the ocean rising as our icy plateaus melt 
Millions of heartbeats away
I feel a closeness growing as the atmosphere breathes in
Our gifts, never exhaling, our eternal un-exchange
And the waves are crashing against us now, love
The electricity in the sky tannic and thick in our mouths
I feel the words (and I am sorry) taste bitter as the lightning 
Our choices sweep the shells from the sea
Fragile in the acid bay
Beneath the sky of fire, our infinite hidden reminders:
I am small, and we are all destroyers of the water 
That slaps into our shins
Sweet starlight, never let us forget
That the waves are crashing against us now, love
The bright-clear water, plastic birds with slick dripping feathers
The substance of bottle caps in the sand, heavy in stomachs
I think perhaps the day is too forgiving of us
Our millions of heartbeats, our delicate radiation 
Somehow the loudest shattering sound in the fire-sky
Our world burning a high fever, while here we stand
Our feet cooled in its water
And the waves are crashing against us now
The empty patches of darkened earth
The birthmark we’ve cut into ourselves 
And the wooden giants made into certificates, the welcome to our quiet desolation
Sweet sunlight, burn the immortal growths into our bodies
So we may feel a fraction of its burdened death
But for now, the anticipation gathers 
On the Bradbury horizon, you and I and the stars can see, 
The waves are crashing against us now