Thalatta! the comet's tail

I begin this last day of March with Malachi Buck Mulligan chanting Thálatta! Thálatta, the sea, she is our great mother. The morning echoing of the Greek-tight sea.

We each prey on her in our own fashion.
That's the beauty of the slime. The snot-green sea.
Pain, that was not yet the pain of love, 
fretted his heart. Ate at his soul.
The scrotumtightening sea.Where is Dedalus when you need him?

The last time I read these lines, I was alone in a Hawaii hotel room, broiled lobster-red by the sun, angered by my pale Irish skin on a beach where generals one stood directing war traffic in the place of many springs, Waikiki. They dispatched the warriors that never returned home.

Thálatta! the snot of the sea. Stromatolites, blue-green algae are the first sex.

Olamphalos. The comet has business in another sector of the universe. 

We are measuring the age of the universe by the age of water evaporating from the comet's tail. Spit in the ocean. Measure the relative age of spirit and the ocean. Thálatta! The sea is our mother. That comet is avoiding its solar orbit.
The mother of water in its tail, the origin of life as we know it, is gathered from the depths of deep space; 4.25 billion years worth of water vaporing across our sky each night. Thálatta! The sea is our mother.

3/31/1996
added & rev. 11/17