1 The beach evaporates into the clouds and on sands beyond hourglasses, I walk— under a dry and empty sky, a blue that doesn’t exist, a white that has died inside.
The dark and light here are not things. The beach is a negative of souls.
I try to imagine a life before the dry, perhaps a lover, someone besides me, to sleep in my arms, that will slack this thirst
but I can’t for all I am is this godforsaken place,
and walking alone far from a dead sea.
2 Further away, just under the horizon, I see there is a ship with black sails marooned in the sand.
And on the dry and broken deck there are dying mermaids singing and praying for lighting, rain, water, a sea to sleep in and swim inside one another.
The answer, as always: there’s the sun, there’s the sand and myself nowhere to be seen by them.
3 The dying mermaids’ prayer-song is a great grieving thing:
“Weave me a gown from this thin washed blue, to be married in or buried in under the water.”
This poem has a companion mirror poem- Walking the Living Beach.
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