The Love of Aurelia labiata
Karla Linn Merrifield

So now is the time of high tide,
I am afraid; I will give in
just as the moon jellies do, be flung
inland in tidal marshes, returned on
the ebb of relief toward the west.

Here I go — flinging
myself into the seething brine
with millions of my kind,
for now my skin too is fragile,
my heart translucent,
my flesh pliable.  Look,
you can see through me,
you, the high tide come now,
bidding me ever out to sea
and into the great Pacific Gyre.
See, here I go spiraling.

I am as a white angel among an abundance
of angels. But here we float, spin,
pulse, without the gravitas of hierarchy
among us. We are not of the earth,
we are not of the heavens,
we are of water like you, ephemeral.

And because you are the high tide,
I will swim again in you
as you sweep me from swirling current’s
edge inexorably toward shore, and
into the harbor where I must become
human once more,  I am afraid.