Prayer to the Pacific
–Leslie Marmon Silko
I traveled to the ocean

distant

from my southwest land of sandrock
to the moving blue water

Big as the myth of origin.

Pale
pale water in the yellow-white light of

sun floating west

to China

where ocean herself was born.

Clouds that blow across the sand are wet.

Squat in the wet sand and speak to the Ocean:

I return to you turquoise the red coral you sent us,

sister spirit of Earth.

Four round stones in my pocket I carry back the ocean

to suck and to taste.

Thirty thousand years ago

Indians came riding across the ocean
carried by giant sea turtles.

Waves were high that day

great sea turtles waded slowly out

from the gray sundown sea.

Grandfather Turtle rolled in the sand four times

and disappeared

swimming into the sun.

And so from that time

immemorial,

as the old people say,

rain clouds drift from the west

gift from the ocean.

Green leaves in the wind
Wet earth on my feet

swallowing raindrops

clear from China.