his leather palms grip the line
as the tuna fights for life.
it sings in psalms,
stinging strong,
shining in his eyes.

what use have you for words, o' fish?
o' tyrant of the sea?
your royal hues
of palace blues
defy all eulogy.

that string of silver, slicing fast
across his arching back
rends slivers til
the swells go still
or coils run out of slack.

and when that sun, that burning eye
sinks beneath the waves,
your wild run
of songs unsung
sets memories ablaze.

at last you rest, o' king of kings,
and glide toward the sky.
your final test
at his behest;
he's weeping as you die.

I can taste the lines your body makes
as it glides over all;
the shape of you
adrift in reckless harmony
against the wind.

and here I lay,
lost among the swells as seabirds cry;
doubleyous through bubbled glass,
so high above us both.

what darkness finds us here?
what terror clings to shadows
beneath our backs?

none that cannot die;
that cannot fail.

rise, my love.
rise against the atmospheres and breathe.
cast down that pitiful tyranny of fear,
rend the loathesome toothed doom.

they cannot harm you here:
you are swifter than them all.

wait for me there.
I, too, will surface.

I see the dog among the stones,
the shape of bones
pressing at its skin.

the air is wet,
the silence met
by silence in return.

the greying dusk - all paper thin -
still smolders from the burn,
while fading embers dance within
the homes they overturned.

ahead, red eyes glare through the dark
as overhead, bulbs burn brighter than any star.
great wheels roll and rumble, beneath and behind
and the rattle and scrape of a hundred gears pulses away,
relentless; unaware and unmoved
by your restless writhing.

behind your eyes, that broken mind
and bleeding heart beat on and on
in stubborn time with some pretense of strength,
but that's gone too, you fear.

outside, the frozen tundra sifts
from white, to blue, to grey,
until the austere sky reflects
and swallows whole its solid self,
leaving wisps of winter dancing in its wake.

how long now til familiarity fades
and you might breathe some novel air and smile
at the shapes and sounds of things you've never seen?
those echoes everlasting might soon die,
if only you could feel some promise below your feet;
the world with all its weightlessness pushing back
from underneath.

there is a place by the sea
where unburdened timbers jut from the ground
in neat little rows;
blades of grass in a field of stone.
monuments of mothers, fathers, children, stand
all weathered by the salt and wind
and laced with wild roses.

silence, here, is holy,
broken only by the waves that wash the shore
and spray the air,
and fill the space with echoes.
gliding softly over all, from hill to hill
and back again, like all those happy voices did
so long ago, when I was young.

a ruined bed, two lovers lay,
outside, the first slow breath of day,

a song is sung - a bird, up high,
born years ago, somehow survived

the rip and tear of tooth and claw,
hatched from a nest that did not fall,

a slender limb that did not break
on sleeping earth that did not quake

grown old and tall and straight and wide,
a withered seed that never died,

blown from afar on autumn breeze,
stirred from the ground with careless ease,

a little boy raking the ground
looked to the sky, and heard the sound
of birds

I will be gone from this place before sunrise.
bone weary and moving fast,
burning memory with light.

those miles, hours, will pass
in a haze of disinterest.
forgotten.

but this?

eternal.
I stay, long after the rest have gone,
departed in the dying light.

lingering, pausing before that sky.
I will never watch the day end
from these shores again.

and now the night has fallen,
that void horizon navy cold.
and I turn.