Note from the author:

I wrote this a few years ago when an au pair girl was on trial for murder
after shaking to death a small baby placed in her care. The mother was a
doctor, who in the interest of continuing her career half time had engaged
the young British girl to provide care for her new baby. The trial was
quite a sensation; the newspapers chocked full of prosecution arguments,
defense arguments, and lengthy accounts of the mother's grief and thoughts,
and the young girl's protestations. It struck me at the time that the
victim, the baby, was being ignored. No one was speaking for the baby. What
was the baby's perspective on what had happened? So I wrote this poem.
"Alee" is the first sound, a wonderful sound, my son made. It is also a
nautical term for the leeward, sheltered side of things.---Kirk Rense

I drift ashore on salty waves,
A present of the sea.
I live within you, then without,
I sing my love with tender shout,
Alee, alee, alee.

I give my love, my fullest love,
My only love to thee,
My all, my soul, my heart, my kiss --
All that I have to trade on this
Awakened shore is my sweet kiss,
Alee, alee alee.

You called, I came, your perfect one,
A present of your will;
My spark, my life was yours to hold,
To shield from the wind and cold,
To cherish, honor, hug, enfold
With softest thought, my wondrous soul,
Alee, alee, alee.

But my love was not enough
To shake you from the world.
I couldn't make you want to be
With me, with me, with me, with me.
You balanced, judged and weighed me less,
I won just half with my caress,
With my caress and lover's song,
Alee, alee, alee.

Whose hands were those that loved me not,
That didn't know of we?
That didn't know that I was you
Or that you were me?
And didn't know that I was small,
Whom all my kisses couldn't thrall,
Who stilled my perfect lover's call?
Alee, alee, alee.

And so I drifted back to sea,
Away from thee, away from thee
A tiny shell upon the swell
Of perfect, boundless, roaring love
That comforts me, that comforts me.
In my sweet sea, in my sweet sea.

---Kirk Rense