her jailed lover’s image in the mirror
slowly loses color
like tea poured again & again
from the same leaves
or a cloud of cigarette smoke mixing with the air
beneath the mirror’s mercury lies
the captain lost at sea in some
interminable corrido
his waterproof watch still ticks inside his slicker
it’s past 3:00
light from the street lamp
filters through the slats of the blind
outshines the moon:
two sets of stripes that cross at
an oblique angle on the walls & the bed
where she lies staring into the one dark corner
a wing coming from sea
at the death of a master
a great gust calling
our thoughts away
making sand the first sea
was you heart
hardly seen
carving a body into
the exact world
old and in pain
I would bring my heart
ugly as the mother of a wound
to you
like the sea alone with a captain
in the middle of a sound sleep
through great grief is a narrow road
to gratitude for goodness
work and family
I miscarry a sea and cannot bear
my new day alone
seeing without breaking
I practice for nothing more
than the present
like a sea fallen quiet
with the settling of other lives
I have a secret hate
like a private sea
that taste of ships put out to rust
that anything other than desert
for a voyage to white hair and ill health
my head full of how to get rid
of my enemy
as if set upon by dogs
and worried to pieces
I am a sorry man
sand to the moaning sea
coming to sign the new
draft of my death
it is a disease of the wind
to keep going to sea
fleet as the fleet
but too small for the great ice
or a ship on a still night
dancing
preparing for an ordinary death
holiday
like water in the hand
going to sea
my thoughts still running
on my money
the old men of islands
never discover ships
observe the sea
only for an hour
talking of thrifty living
and the winter ice
Lord Sand left the sea
for the fields
I fear he is not well
that it was done for a joke
the weather is now very warm
an axe white with light
but Lord Sand they say
will lead in the darkest manner
mouth in mourning like a prince
believed to lay up hidden money
lord of anger
without any consciousness of his faults
he has no face but a grave
which I will not call my brother
I resolve to stand on my own legs
or fall