These old doors,
sullen as spinsters.

Wharves, deckhands, the old chopping block:
flights of time misremembered in a
backward gaze.

Toes in water.
Hooks to fish.
The sea salty.

How shall I count the ways...
lost among the waves.

But look, afar, the old man on his boat!
Is he Charon come to point the way to
the seaward lost; or has he come to
sequester memory to some far shore?

(Maybe he's a schmuck with a paddle!)

Seagulls, feathers, the brine:
all groan with this wood.
In this wood was the line
that snatched life from the water
(the fish, the scales—they shine)
and flopped on the deck,
heterocercal.

The evening closes on this vista but
not the charades of time.