'literature has a way of owning you'-- (the author said, after the book-signing; and taking me behind the shelves, showed me what possession meant, riptide trough and swell) ---much as the sea lays claim to one adrift, to drown or hold aloft, then pin to bed, displacing breath; choke...release...toss free, choke; lungs drenched: retching silt, pelagic darkness spotted with the faint transmuted sun. whether full to glint a myriad in sky, or blind to evanesce in foam and spray... an atlantean crush of symbols: lost-- my inner mythic fades to distant waves revising how i write of self, sunk