Shores of Paradise

I have stood at the edge

Where the water first remembers the land,

Where the shore of paradise

Lifts its soft, salt-sweet mouth

and lets me taste.

Not the whole island—

Only the wet line of it,

The place where foam becomes sand

And sand becomes something I can carry on my tongue

When I turn away.

I go back.

Always I go back.

Each return the tide has rewritten the shore

In the same patient hand,

and still it is new:

the same brief, impossible sweetness

rising under my lips,

the same slow pull that says

this is the only country

I will ever need to know.

I do not stay adrift

There is no going back out adrift at sea

Paradise does not keep what it has kissed;

It only lets the kiss remain.

So I leave with the taste of it

darkening in my mouth,

and the knowledge that tomorrow

I will walk the same wet edge again,

barefoot, certain,

devoted to the single place

where the world becomes

more than the world

for as long as I am willing

to kneel and drink.