writing poetry in the dim-lit cabin of a broken sea
dreading some great unseen folly
     i’m threading it through me with needles
i keep in the box
beneath winter coats and unworn textbooks where my roses go to die

it became the sea to my needy heart
we were the poem that fell apart in the first stanza
     by the time you apprehend this kind of sin
     it’s too late
the surface above just catches it; that
feeble light that grows dimmer
     every undulating wave