Bath of Aphrodite

She rises among boulders. Naked, alone,

In freshets of the seacliff wind she stands;

She comes rose-golden over the color of stones,

Down to the wide plane of the seaward sand.

And what are these . . . visitants that pass her?

Shorebirds with wings like thin

Fins against the morning

She wades in shallows warmer than the air

And sees the long push of the promised foam,

She feels the chill that draws her breath like fear,

And wading slowly feels for the deeper cold...

What voices twitter and fade along that shore?

The godwit and the killdeer and the curlew, '

The turnstone and the willet.

And now the water is silvering to her knees

Over the sunmarks flurried about her feet

She sees a hundred harmless fishes flit

In the autumn of the glass-sharp morning sea.

What birds are those that ride the rising seas?

Slow shorelong pelicans

Fanned by the shoreward green.

Her thighs curved like the Venus's-shell submerge,

She wades into deep waves, her body drowns

Up to the lifted breasts and lifting arms;

Foam floats the tendrils of her tightening curls.

What birds are these that fall with never a swerve?

Far waves where morning burns,

Terns shatter into glass.

Now the rich moment, as she leans and swims

Folded into a hissing slope of foam:

"The sea receives the shape that once it gave:

Her gold and roses to its dazzle of waves,

The shadow of all her secrets to its shade.