When you live with an ocean

there is undeniably a line in your life

a point defining the parameter

of your existence

an orderly demarcation

across which you cannot go

for when you move towards it

it recedes before you

always remaining

defining water and sky

the known and the unknown

the finite and beyond.

It is always there

across the vision of your world

unyielding, changeless, no

erratic angle in your life

just this gentle curve

the fence about your yearning

the boundary of all striving.

So it is with some admiration

I perceive the fact that

islanders know the round ocean

not for its restriction upon them

but rather for the challenge

in its horizon.