Ed O’Casey 

The wisest of you says
The rain does not know it’s the ocean—
a foolish observation
based on shallow wisdom.

I offer this: The rain
knows nothing but the ocean. It knows,
I know, the air that sustains you
is a thin, translucent strip of water,
separated only by density
from that which drowns.

You cannot know—
it is worth the million years
to wash a hole through a mountain.

You see me as many perspectives,
many sets of teeth.
You’ll never understand how to be one
and many at the same time,

a drop of water, a lake—
two differently colored eyes
in the same head.
Regardless of how clean or murky,
the splash of water on the surface of any pool
is a conversation with the self.

Do you truly believe that the loss of one
diminishes the whole?
seven minus one
always equals seven.

 

 

Ed O’Casey received his MA from the University of North Texas. He loves all things narcissistic, and lives with an unruly ferret, a rabbit, and his wife. His poems have appeared or are upcoming in Cold Mountain Review, Tulane Review, Oak Bend Review, Euphony, Mayo Review, Poetry Quarterly, NANO Fiction, and Wilderness House Literary Review. He is currently working on his MFA at New Mexico State University.