The Sea as Heartbreak

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             I
A wave. —A wave. —Another wave retells
The gain and loss, the wealth without a cost—
Recalling how each wave crashes memory,
So far from home and counting what to see.
I stand upon the shore, where wind is tossed
As infinitely as clattering shells

Upon the shore. She greets my eyes with bold
Surrender, nothing returning but wave
And tide. As sun and cloud beseech their home,
So I had begged for shelter. Now sands comb
Debris, the shipping bits that time will save
As cold comfort. The shadows grow old

And light that windows offer to my room
Has nowhere to go, now shunted and lamed
By dying shades. She comes to bring me back
With meats and wine, with spells that crack
An ancient code: your deeds are lost, unnamed
By fame, undone by beauty’s beckoning doom.

             II
We watch cloudy shadows with sunlit cast
Across the waves, like dark monsters beneath
Our vision. Hand across your brow, you peer
Where sea and sky are married, lost in vast
Declensions: wind and water—spangled breath
Of glittering gems that glow and disappear

Beneath our separate islands. Though we share
A single epic, lyric solitude
Maroons these comic palms, their offered green
Is lost in ocean’s grey. For ghosts that bear
The memories of tragic war intrude,
Insisting a claim on blood, true and clean

As bodies washed ashore. Such is the loom
In Ithaca that plucks Ogygia
From its threads, woven poor with cramped regret…
Tonight the stars dine alone and assume
A feast of meats we would call nostalgia—
And waves. —And waves. —And other waves forget.

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