Two concavities of disappointment,
a foot apart on shoreline
Had summoned an uncommon ensemble:
You, Me and departing sea.
Together, we swept up the sun
into the muslin of our woes
To place it above this sanctuary's chirpy repose.
This meager esplanade is
where our ride ends, for now
For daybreak has found
in icy cove a paramour, and how!
As before, we each in skintight selfishness
Stockpile into our impoverished selves,
A million mute impressions born full-term each instant
Their ancestry straddling absolute turbulence and mutinous stillness.
We watch the merciless dragnet of the tide
Draining the waves of their souls
Leaving the cruel play of morning light sand-bare.
East labors at the looms of fortune you say
Weaving subtle irony and the insolence of emptiness
Irrevocably into the fruits of our toil.
Even dew silently descends and percolates the coast
Skirting shells, in gracious resignation, never to return,
Soaking with tangy sweetness the tattered fabric that
Tethers us to the lifeless hourglass that has
Mummified our happiness.
Long ago, that hand above forgot
To flip it on its head,
To tick, and nudge its sands.
As the earth looks away under our soles
Two hapless lives in tow
We encounter nothing new
That same old enduring thirst
That same old today.
