JEFFREY HERMANN

Once Earth Had Just One Sea

Why do I love you more or in some other way
when I see you taking decongestants or analgesics?

I want your pain erased, your passages clear.
I want to stand here on the shore of the Atlantic 

and ask if you feel you’re on the edge 
of something. If the ocean mist is so fine 

you feel a tug of nostalgia for the Mesozoic Era,
the beauty of oxygenating through a set of gills.

You recall the nurses sending us home 
saying preemies can stop breathing 

any time, that blowing lightly in her face 
would get her going again most likely. 

You’ve been braver than I at accepting 
our bodies, the intrusions at a molecular level. 

We go to bed with hope and chemistry and 
I sometimes wake to see you at the bathroom sink.

Though our legs dangle over the pier 
we’re still safely on this tectonic plate. 

We don’t have to think about taxes, 
the blood-brain barrier, or any of that.

We’re watching our children 
hold their breath in the waves.