Who knew the soft breeze
Was merely a tease
And sunrise a false fire,
The waters once calmer
Inviting and promised
A siren’s calling horror.
Quiet Lake a liar,
liar.


My God has watched the wind turn and many a son die, though I did not pay attention to deaths jealous eye.
The shock grasps and pulls until you know its true,
The best of us was taken
And I was left to you
The shadow on his chin in that early golden glow,
stuck inside the tent I did not know.
That the paddle of their canoe through the calm breeze would be
the last I’d see--
Island time clocks slow like a grief as it grows and regret in often company.
Who gives a **** island was stretched from shore to shore,
Divided by that cold wet demon
A womb of lost children, a watery graveyard.
All for smoke and fire they paddled their canoe
One beached on land like a salty sailor
The other exiled to hells blue.

The tragedy—whose heart weighted in gold left my copper soul rusted, the brakeman sold the purest human I’d known and grief clocks slow when you keep waiting for his body to surface.