Thursday, November 26, 2009

Lights fall from the Old Man of the Sea (a wrestling poem for Rus Bowden)

we hold until I am exhausted

he is a trickling thing of sand
a scintilla that drains back into the beach

a shock of trees
released by strong winds
he is a fish, a slither
an eel that flits away
then has me pinned

he is all around me
he clenches, shoves my face
towards his
buried down there
beneath our grinding feet
iron-eyed our faces

stare it out underground
through lock and tremor
we are two seismic prayers
to a god divided

he is a lion he is my mother he is the flicker of songbirds falling
as black snow in early evening my fingers are wings are poems
within his smoke we fold back to embrace
count five sudden things of magic
stamp and hold tight

lion mother phantom
my lost brother
whistles hard in the waves

old father in the fallen leaves offshore

we walk into the sea
each carrying the other
light as children who cannot return
rise only as the tide
sends up her drowned lanterns

each with his heart of red sand
catching, holding

our breath beyond reach

.

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