Grasping the railings of the song.
You don't call it that--have you
been standing there long? I
rubbed misgivings from the air,
stroking the fervid counterpane,
foraging thought, thumb in hand.
The spilling wound and the starved
alarm preceded me
in the contemplation
of the stale flake of day.

The sea speaks only to itself
in grave hollows of absorbing
and rejoinder, a conversation
heedless of the sparkle, the crazed
eons, the dead. Pale whispers
from the bite of night, huge slaps
of air, from clattered cold to
sudden hot, the force of what is
and what is not.

You're laughing at me, cradling
your insane candle,
as if prominence excuses
such fractionate contempt
for what dives beyond us
to the depths you can't
ignore forever.

2009