I won't have to tell you we were only horse shoe crabs.

I won't have to tell you where to meet me on the shore
because WE already know-- WE have always known.
WE have always had the moon carved into the back of our
skull by the fingers of a God who etched in blood blue--
he wrote our names there Xiphosura 
and all of our mothers were
swallowed by a wave-- children of the round
abdomen of the moon and clasped hands of a wave--
we never had a father-- but God did make our heads 
thrown on a pottery wheel like bowls to fill
with constellations muddied by the last eyelashes of the sun.
I won't have to tell you that WE are older than sea shells
older than bare feet-- that we have seen the tide come
in like a bed sheet and come in like forty lashes
until the coast was bloodied and bent-kneed.
I won't have to tell you that WE were never more than
pottery but we climbed the shoreline like oil painters.
Don't move on without me-- I will be waiting on the shoreline--
I won't have to tell you where to meet me
WE just know. Do not walk with me back through the thumb
prints of our mothers-- WE will meet again
when she sets out stars like bread crumbs--
follow them with me and love me there
and then fall back into the sea--
serve soup with me from your cranium-- cradle
soft knees and channels of salt water blood--
bleed the sky and don't look back.