The Ocean and The Moon

I asked the ocean how she survives the pull of the moon.

And she said, “I just let myself be moved.”

“Doesn’t it hurt?” I asked her.

“Sometimes,” she admitted,

“but pain that teaches you to expand

isn’t the same as pain that closes you.”

She splashed a wave onto the shore like a sigh.

“I grow each time I rise.

I rest each time I fall.”

Then she quietly crept toward my feet on the sand and said,

“You, too, are allowed to move this steadily

through your own tides.”