Cross Current Carol Carpenter Carpenter Page 1 The undertow yanks me just below the surface. Sucks me back to birth, that long canal of dark. I wiggle to light, crawl to beach. Rest where I am defined. A human wreathed in seaweed, damp with promise. Like you, I have a soft body, hard mollusk shell on my back. I can creep on shore, retract my head, leave a trail of where I've been. I have once risen from the salty brine, the ocean floor safe, now with deadbolt locks on every door. I hang suspended, a shell of myself. At midnight, I will come where you are, baptize myself in ocean. I will drop fathoms to where you swirl in quicksilver cross currents. We will bathe ourselves, braid Neptune's beard. Let us embrace a wayward current, etch its     moves on our armor. We will jitterbug a storm full of white lightning and thunder words. by everybody. Carol Carpenter's stories and poems have appeared in Yankee, Barnwood, Byline, and Quarterly West. She is a former recipient of the Richard Eberhart Prize for Poetry.