Do We Really Need Another Poem About the Ocean?

I’m tired of reading about the primordial soup.
About fish birthing tetrapods, and how human blood
is salt-twin to both Atlantic and Pacific — an
umbilical cord never cut — endlessly tugging
at lungs and liver, and the literary device
of oscillating waves and tides as penetration.

I’m really not sure anymore.

I just sang a septet of days on St. George Island, each
one repeating a tempered chorus of sun and surf.
Buffet and Aldean own houses here, but it’s still
the “Redneck Riviera”, more tag holders from
Ohio and Kentucky, than Westchester or DC.

Yes, the sand was new cotton and the turquoise water
smelled of rebirth. Wading through half-foot waves to cast,
the sea held me like the ur-Mother that she is,
though whiting and pompano failed to suckle at my bait —
most of them anyway.

Thankfully, sand gnats were still in class,
learning to extract mammal blood through
chitin straws.

Every afternoon, the wind ran her painted fingers
through my silver hair and each evening, my stomach
bulged with lower life forms — oysters and shrimp, chased
with fried…