did you notice when the words shed their skin?
the hour was late in the idle day
and the light of significance grew dim.
at the shore, the waves compelled you to stay

and you saw, in the waves that slid away
all the ways in which you could have altered
the course, and return, of waves come to claim
what was only ever borrowed from them.

two serpents of galactic consequence
are coiled in the incommensurable.