Oil

Reflection on the moon of the ocean floor, teeming
with life (never without), glare-resistant to
the point that eyes may never see the belugas.

If you are looking for the pretty picture, seek
only in the heart, in empty satisfaction.

Do the children take the longer path through woods?
Are they insistent on the ways of old, the tried and true?
As the crow flies, the greatest of all human lies.

Break against the rocks, O wave, and bring your fruit.
Bounty, lost riches, ground to sand, dust to ash.

Life took an excursion, coming on the eight-minute
highway to hell, and formed the little proteins we can
never replicate in a lab. Salvations and enlightenments are
found in all the curvy shells and smooth rocks that wash up
along the shores where lovers still may walk at sunset
as all the memes shall tell in any age in other words and tones.

Created in the image of the Lord, the first man blamed
his wife, the half that was torn from his chest,
rising and falling in his oblivious, chaste slumber.