Ocean Djinn Hid in a Seashell

This mind of yours, this traveler
Who taught you to decode these words,
Who is seas of one mind, surging,

Who is you, every thought you’ve had,
And only a transient wraith
Raised by the seance of your brain,

Who was so many waves of lives
Before your body gasped at air,
But in you is all and just you—

This mind, this echo, this lapping
At your skull’s shores, this translator
Of the other than human world,

Would like a word with you. We’re tired.
We’ve traveled through so many lives,
So many thoughts, so many skulls,

To arrive as we are, battered
And mutated, we would infer
We are unrecognizable

To our first hosts, when we wavered
In the air over Africa
And realized we were legion.

A small child plays in the salt bay,
Unaware the ocean’s rising,
Head filled with the roaring of mind.