Anabler

Admit it. You’ve learned little
From the people who taught you

Face to face. Information
Has been your ocean, phrases,

Sometimes numbers, the voices
Half sounded-out in your skull,

Free diver, pearl forager,
Swimmer of deeper shallows

If not the abyssal cliffs.
Texts of every invention

Spilled our waves and you swam them,
Body-surfed and dove right in.

Sometimes you sank out of sight
To emerge dripping salt words,

Mer creature or wer creature,
Compound of beast and language,

Half lost in watery thoughts,
Half formed of the thoughts ourselves,

Anabler, neither helpless
Nor aiding anyone else.