Plasm
The same smile smiles
on the sessile and the motile,
the benthic and the littoral.
It greets their arrival
and departure
as the pulse of life
calls progeny to parenthood
and the ground of being
draws them back again.
Wave upon wave breaks
on the fullness of time.
Only the ocean endures
and the ghost of that grin
in spore and seed and sperm.