On a sun blistering afternoon
standing alone
on a platform anchored
in twelve feet of Atlantic Ocean,
trying to gauge just how far I
have to swim
to reach the shore,
and how to summon the nerve
to spring toward the sky,
my aching body
arching over a circle
of terrorizing bell-shaped nettles,
their tentacles stretched like barbed wire,
waiting to snare me,
it occurs to me
that these primitive life forms and I
are distant relatives,
going back some three billion years
to the time
we had a common ancestor,
a deep-sea gelatinous germ perhaps,
and they’ll probably be glad
to see me
on my belated return to mother sea,
though I could be wrong.