Things Explain Themselves

Things Expfain Themselves My belief is in the sea I remember from when my family would leave through the night for Florida; it's ajourney I find for myself when I notice the land is deeper and there's more winter coming; I have no idea of the gulls' scope as they shove through the water for a particular fish drawing their eye and I can't join with their flight with the scales beating off the sun, gills open as I see them feeling the rise, their home absolved into air; I have my roots in the sea, like a field of kelp, tugging the bottom ridges, being shucked in tides. I say things explain themselves because the mind has nojustification, no spell of chanting that exceeds the undoing of waves as they split into sky and are launched to a shore they seldom feel; because outside the sea and the world there is only a meek solitude we're dancing to, a ritual as much as the survivor of a tribe will speak his line's heritage in the sand and clay and in those heels tell the earth of a presence it dismisses; I acceptthe dancing necessity, but prefer the sea's solution and am moved by the sound of wake runs in their hesitations before the land. There is finally no motive to the waltz our legs choose, to the designs the sand uncovers under us and it's only the harmony of steps we're seeking, to so touch the land as to be touched, as is water to the low shores. DOUG ABRAMS Doug Abrams is a law student at Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. ...