Susan MitchellLove Song
yes I went to the ocean because I wanted to live expansively slopping over recklessly unheeding every warning I gave myself take me I said to the ocean do me up like the comics in lurid golds and greens above the horizon clouds big as boulders seemed about to topple ocean I have not come to hear the tiny smack a snow- flake makes touching down I have come for the fizzy the bubbly the foam my morning cappuccino drifting in to lick you up to keep spooning miles of creamy swirls unswirling who knows what sweet new ideas trapped still frothing call me extravagance call me lolling about to loiter at the edge of amplitude why not look how the ocean pushes up against me its nakedness oiled and slathered how it showers me in rhinestones and glitz tomorrow it may come rolling in milks and ermines three crones crooning oh lambent umpires of the wily wastes should love be given its own tense unfettered by the pasts and futures to found or to founder says the ocean succeed or surcease cry the crones love is the antidote to its own poisons hwaet I say to the ocean chasing after it hwaet does the ocean say that is one way to begin does it cry tie yourself to the mast or master your cry rage sing the rage of or sing what is all the rage oh those ragas those regal rags raging
Susan Mitchell's books include Rapture and Erotikon (HarperCollins). She teaches at Florida Atlantic University.
