Before you collapsed
back to the blank face of Ys,
back onto damp sands,

just for an instant,
             I stopped. (in my desk chair)
and saw
your spires, heard your swollen bells
                           and smiled in the sun.

You rose in earnest,
sang to the horizon(!)
the casual and the causal.

the waves eddied around
you and suddenly,
as easily as you drew
from the seabed,

you let me know,

everything that matters
(one day)
collapses.