Water changes sides in Brandi Boyer's "On the Waves of the Ocean." In the first line it is something the speaker sinks into, "a pool of your lies." By the last lines it has become a figure of care, the "lady of the waters," who listens, dries tears and is promised a place in the family. In seven short lines the poem moves from betrayal to a kind of rescue. Its central idea is that recovery may come not from replacing one lover with another but from finding a different kind of love, one built on gentleness, honesty and loyalty.
The opening metaphor is compact. Lies are not just spoken; they are a liquid the speaker lies in and drowns in. A "pool" is still and enclosed, with no way out, which suits a relationship where someone was kept in the dark. The title offers the opposite: waves and an ocean, open and moving, able to carry a person rather than trap them. The poem's real contrast is between two kinds of water, the stagnant one made by "you" and the vast, sheltering one embodied by "her."
Who is the "lady of the waters"? The poem never says. Judging by the title, she may be the sea personified, but the words "softness and gentle womanhood" also allow her to be a spirit, a figure of imagination, or a real woman. This openness works in the poem's favour, because the reader can see her as whatever comfort they would turn to. The verbs are tender and physical: the speaker "whispered" the love story, a word that suggests both secrecy and intimacy, and she "dried my broken tears." There is a nice paradox in water drying water. Calling the tears "broken" is also unusual, as if the speaker's own state has spilled onto them.
The shape of the poem tells its own story. There is no regular metre and no rhyme scheme, only free verse that moves like confession. The first line runs to about ten syllables, and the lines then swell, with "I pledged to her my honor and respect above all others" stretching to around fourteen, as though the vow is being declared in a single breath. Then the poem contracts sharply into two short lines of about seven syllables each: "To treat her as my family / A sister, aunt and Mother." The effect is of a long wave breaking and settling. The one real sound-echo comes at the end, where "others" and "Mother" almost rhyme. The sound links the exclusive promise to the final image, so the vow and the family become one idea.
That vow deserves a closer look. "Above all others" sounds like the language of marriage promises, though the poem never says so. Here it is redirected towards a bond that is not romantic. "Honor and respect" are also the very things the earlier "lies" denied. Meanwhile the pronouns do quiet work. "Your" appears once, in line one, and then the betrayer vanishes, replaced by "her" and "my." The poem punishes deceit by giving it a single line and then moving on.
The closing list of roles climbs a small ladder: a sister is an equal, an aunt a guide, and Mother, the only one capitalised, is the deepest protector. Capitalising it gives the word extra weight and may hint at an older idea of a nurturing nature or sea, though the poem leaves that as an echo rather than a claim. What is missing from the list is "lover." After a love story ends in lies, the speaker chooses family, a bond defined by care rather than desire.
The poem is not polished in every phrase. "I became to love her" is a little unidiomatic where "came to love" might be expected, though it does suggest a slow change rather than a sudden one. Its strength is clarity and sincerity. A single image, water, carries the whole emotional arc from danger to refuge without any need for elaborate language. For students it shows how a metaphor can organise a poem, and how the shape of the lines can mimic a feeling. It also ends on a promise rather than a finished cure. The speaker pledges to treat her as family, so the healing lies ahead, which makes the final short lines feel hopeful rather than conclusive.