Vocation

Vocation

The voice that speaks us into engagement names, and

in so many words, creates us

--creates, not constructs, names,

not labels.

On the edge of an ocean I break again

and again… if I am alive;

what forms is not me but rather the one

who pronounces me lifts me up and curls

me over upon myself

translucent with living coral and darting

flecks of hunger and tosses me down,

digging out, eternally, the earth, my cradle.

The secret of living

is not finally taking shape

but rather being ever rearticulated

by this great benevolent tongue

so that continents are moved,

tide pools populated,

living creatures sent scuttling

as one shattered form draws up once again

into another, reformed,

reborn, recreated, renamed,

one song, measures cresting far out

toward the horizon,

sounding me into being,

humming gently even now in these

shallows.