Kaikane

His name means “Waterman.” 
He’s twelve. Waves rise and break in him.
I can remember when he was a fish

flopping in the belly of his too-young mother,
in the heart of his surfer dad. 
Remember, too, when he’d just learned to walk  but had few words, would point                            to everything he saw. He saw everything. 

One day, even after he’d pointed and pointed      off the sea-wall where we sat, we had to squint to see, amazed, a sand-colored octopus            clinging to sand-colored rock                              in shallow, rubbish water.  Life                              where we thought there was none.  

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I picked him up then, looked into his eyes,

whispered this fortune:                                            “Kaikane, every thing that matters                        you already know, but soon                                  you’ll begin to forget as you learn.                      Forget, but not lose.  Years from now,
some tiny movement may catch your eye          and wake you so you remember                          who you have always been.                                    Point for us then.”  

​I wish he could remember now.

While time takes its time.

he has to be shaped on land,

restrained, corrected.

But inside, always, he tilts toward the sea.

His body knows this ocean

is made of rivers whose currents cross

and clash in the dark like his own.

Whenever he’s not tied down, he slips

into water where he can do no wrong. 

Pray the ocean that loves Kaikane

is too big, too old, to ever die.

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from Bamboo Ridge

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