The Shape of Water Most Like Love

Rain is not the shape of water most like love,

For rain nourishes fields

Or destroys them with indifferent passion.

The sky wears rain on its sleeve.

Powerful and beautiful, but capricious,

Requiring rainbows to reassure us,

Rain is not love

Only a love affair.

The ocean is not the shape of water most like love,

For it is love's destination.

Although the realm of birth, each ocean touches

Every shore and action, named or not.

A form of everything,

Yet unable to create more of itself,

The ocean is not love --

Love is but one part of its history.

Ice is not the shape of water most like love,

For ice is like what is called thinking,

A patient architecture made from what already exists.

Mostly at opposite poles, or high on rock,

Ice is not love -- it broods too far away

To discover anything greater than itself.

Lakes are too inward, rivers divide.

Crystals of snow all break and decay.

Clouds and fog by definition drift.

What is the shape of water most like love?

Hurricanes, unfathomed depths, and polar caps

Only churn what has another source,

The drops formed one by one for the first time,

In infinite darkness and under irresistible force.

And you, who are mostly water,

In your unrelenting solitude coupled with movement,

Although you might do anything,

Still resemble a spring

More than you resemble rain, or the ocean,

Or an immense, distant river of ice.