The black night’s ebbing tide
erased the only remaining hints,  
the cresting long ocean swells
did not cleanse without a trace.

Adrift and lethargically bobbing
seaweed entangled teakwood box
of water-logged photographs, drowning,
surrendered from the heart of the sea

Like molted wild feathers cast ashore with the tide
to the coarse specks of rasping  sands,
Darwin's dream in an emptied  sea-bubble popped,
dissipated into its own haplessness,
bestrewn about an untrodden seashore  

Washed out snapshots of life’s disregarded minutia  
enchained to an ordinary forgotten Kodachrome moment
left out to the consequences of the ever fickle tides,
abandoned happenstance spilled by chance
upon another undiscovered world

The warped and bloated wooden box encasement,
hoary with swollen furrowed woodgrain s,  
wearied by an enduring measureless moment adrift;

as if an ill-fated message in a misbegotten leaky bottle,
corked with marooned good intentions,
and images of disappearing dreams
flung out shipwrecked in barnacled azure glass
beneath a sky so far away


*someone you used to know