The Sea Unfolds Her Arms

The sea unfolds her arms, reaching into the sand hills along the shore, offering her strength only for the moment and then retracts if the offer is not accepted.  Only to offer it again and again, a constant tease.  She pulls back; retrieving what she can from shore and greedily drags it out back to her bosom.

I stand at her feet and cry out to God in the clouds as if she really resides there and not beside me in the rocks and the grains of sand at my feet.  I shed years of fear and sadness and ask to be heard. 

I am good, I am loyal, I am faithful with a good heart!  Please hear my appeal for any sign that will help my stuck feet move again.

The sea gathers my shed tears in her long, reaching arms and draws them back to her bosom where they mix and churn within her heart.  She is in conversation with the clouds and sky.  What shall we do?  This soul cries out to us.

She offers her arms back to shore, close to my feet, not quite there, circling around me, not yet touching me and then she pulls me into her arms, picking me off my feet, knocking me to the ground. 

Get up! Move! Walk!  she pleads as she washes me with her foamy tears.  Below my feet she leaves me white shell fingernails, a thumb and index finger and a shard of obsidian, the stone of protection and tool of change, as gifts from her soul.

Up on a hill three brown men craft a sand sarcophagus.  A container for God’s tears perhaps?  Can you build a golden chalice for something that I was just bathed in?  My tears and God’s, mixed by the sea and returned to me as an embrace.  The pharaoh of Egypt could not save his son with all the gold statues and coins.  Only faith and love alone can save and heal.

Faith and love alone.  Write, the sea says.  The sky calls out to me.  Write, write.  So simple.  A word, a touch, tears from heaven.