Ululations break the night –

Primal lows meandering over marsh:
The voices of creatures curious and lost,
Alien to these muddy shores.

Spectral under first-light obscurity,
The estuary’s fog swathes those beasts,
Slick hulks rippling the dark water
With trailing wakes of brackish grime.

Bank side, a lonely smudge stands sentinel,
Helpless to heed the low mourning song
Trembling across the fen.

These wearisome keens are muted in murk

And all sound is swallowed
By the rallying dawn.

Her eyes speak
the truest words
never uttered
They tell of the ocean
on a lonely shore
Of salt marsh days
and windswept dunes
And love among the ruins
Her habit worn
vow unbroken to the night
She smiles a wanton wish
of summer days
and a fair young boy
among the glades
She sighs
her dreams away
and polishes again
the bare stone floor.

r ~ 7/28/14

River stories told,
Marsh reeds, chapters of otters,
Fish tails left on rocks.

Wet ground all around
Squishes all around my feet
Smells just like decay