Thursday, August 29, 2013

Leaving the Sea

The waves are gray, running in, and the sky
is gray too. Light rises from water and wind,
obliquely. The tide is past the flood.
I'm still grateful, but I'm puzzled.
Why was I sent here, with an empty envelope
to deliver to a bad address?

There won't be many more,
and a grand love now would only ruin me:
I am leaving the sea.
Now the spine of my life
must be the making of small
and intricate things; the replacement
of a rotting window-sill
with good sound wood;
the call of a thrush
from the red sunrise.

The foam slides in long, ghost-white garlands
down wet obsidian slopes, whispering
of promises long unkept. When I woke this morning
the light of your eyes was fading from mine:
my arms were empty.

5 comments:

David said...

Lovely,
thanks, Dale.

Dale said...

Thanks for reading, David!

NT said...

The big discipline of the second half is to not think of it as "settling" in a bad way, but of accommodating and making the most of the local possibilities.

At least it is for me.

<3

Dale said...

Thank you Nina! Ah, but you know, this is just a poem: it has to follow the sadness where it goes :-)

rbarenblat said...

Why was I sent here? o, what a question. Can we ever really know? My usual answer is "to love," though perhaps that's glib.

I send love.