O taste and see

Is the surface wet? my friend always asked.
He lived on the slopes of a high mountain from where
he gazed at the ocean of our home.
He had a condition that immobilized him
there. I admired his house, it was extravagant, yet comforting
to him, and also me.

It's not really a question, I'd reply.
If you touch it, you enter it,
you can't avoid wetness when you're
that close. And the surface isn't what
it seems. It just looks like that.

But he was never satisfied. He'd gaze and ponder,
wondering what the actual feeling was.
Here, I'd say, put your hands under the tap,
you know what that's like.
Not the same, he'd mutter,
that's my own water.
I want to feel the ocean.

We spoke of swimming, sharks, seals, dolphins and
currents with their causeways of cold and warmth
circling our planet, having made it what it is. Crabs, seaweed,
wrecks, rocks and deep things we'll never see for ourselves.

And always his question:
is the surface wet?

We saw shimmering dawns, gleaming sunsets,
days of dreaming and nights when city lights were stars
against the moon's speech, uttering some mysterious thing
onto that surface of which he required something
I couldn't answer.

I had always wished for ways to take him down to
find out for himself.

Is the surface wet?
Exasperated, I'd say, if you plunged in,
you'd know the difference between surface and
sea.

But that was unkind, he had a condition whereby he
couldn't leave his home.
And I liked his home, too.

When I now walk the beaches, and look towards where
his house has been,
and feel spray dart against face, eyes, and ears,
and I open my central self
to his question, and oceans turn so many ways
within,
I am tempted to swim out as far as I can go
as an answer to
the surface of his query.

It's easy if you've been there,
but difficult to explain.