To Those Who Walk Upon White Waves

I have been and I am gone—
a memory turned like a favourite song
into the strands of a siren wife
floating, cavorting, in the ice
of a common life.

I have seen and I have sung
the channels dry to the earth’s rich dung
and roots and usurping life,
the polished scissors and sharpened vice
of our common strife.

I have crept the moon’s harsh pull
onto the beaches of our days
and loved and left
my kiss stone by stone down the path
of a thousand dreams.

And I am gone, being sated, full,
into the imagination of the haze—
inundated and quite bereft—
courtesan to the hurricane’s wrath
against the struts of life’s shattered beams.