We hold the ancients in our latent memory,
seeking the incarnate to make meaning of the symbolic,
in our need to be alive in these treacherous times.

Every sign and symbol of the sacred binds us
to the darkness, immerses us
in the fluid that made our hearts beat
like the wings and beak of the eagle
that caused Promethius to be born again, and again,
like the wingspan of the albatross returning
to guide me home, and home, and home again
as I searched for the signs that would set me free.

When I drove over the mountain to see you for the first time,
a shark sailed across the sky, powerful, charcoal-grey
in silhouette against rosy-dawn, heralding your birth.
That was before I knew your name, an auspicious sign of the gods
that they were still here, a sign of the one
called by many names across the Pacific,
Tagaloa
Tangaroa
Kanaloa
a god before there was a horizon, a progenitor
of the oceans deep, 
of the shark,
of the octopus, 
the albatross to watch over.

Now, I see him in you,
golden-ocean eyes, watching and observing,
an ancient soul in a new body,
a mystery, a reminder of the ancient revelation
that we always return to the deep,
to the source, a fusion of sea and sky
where there is no horizon, just us, in the present,
in a symbolic cycle of homecoming.