Not Gold, But Pearls

Unmoored, drifting,
anchors aweigh,
much like lifting
my wrinkled feet
from the silty floor,
where the world
begged me,

“Do not let go!”

The Queen of the Kelp,
through her bubbling dirge,
demands a tribute,
not gold, but pearls.

Tremor and hum,
she shudders and shakes,
beneath the folds
cast by the blanket’s
wake.

::sea-foam ripples::

The waves make…
(well, besides the breaker’s ache)
a rhythm of quakes
that come from
the cold.

Moonlight makes

me lonely, rise and fall,
one moment, I’m lower,
the next, I’m glowing.

The stinging on my cheeks
is the mark of the Moon,
the Queen’s lurking twin,
unfathomable, entombed,
in her dry,

frozen

place.

“Take.Give.Take.”

Whispers Luna,
as she presses her palm
against my face,
and pushes me back
to the Queen’s
tethered grace,
where,
in my irritation,
a pearl I will make.

The constant pull
between these two
fills me with such
un-ebbing

rage.

© CG Tenpenny, 2021.

The sea demands a decision.

Image credit.