A brightness bathed the night:
Spectral corollas flecked the slick,
Damp sea – shoals of languid light
Mourned in planetary shadow play.
Bloodless bronze effigy,
Son of Sirius, hastened earthward
From the jaw of an untamed brute:
Swathed in an amorphous, turbid
Cloth, he fell – stark as crimson
Amid the dull, wan air. A death
Most uncouth: lain now on a pillow
Of galling shell and abrasive flesh.
A rare trinket plucked for my memory.
©Thomas Gabriel