The Despair
Here, at the meeting of land and sea,
I find nothing new washed ashore.
I pick my way on the long stretch of stones
walking in solitude, salt stinging my lips
cracked by the wind’s relentless beating.
Is it time to wade into you,
sea that temps me with such sorrowed sigh?
You longingly touch my feet leaving
damp kisses of afflicted charm.
You bestow these like untouched hosts.
The shore stretches, widens,
it beckons my brooding mind to follow,
further still, far, far, I wander,
with shadowed gulls trailing, watching.
Calling out with mottled stillness, they deride my soul.
The sun filters cold, yellow and contemptuous,
through twisted, storm cowed trees.
It brings my eyes to tears, the salt of my body
departing, like questions remaining unanswered,
and falling, to be diluted by the rising tide.
I am flung back from contemplative reason
by the pricking sleet racing needles across the water.
It hits my skin with pointed precision, and pain,
that is mortal and fleeting, washes through me.
My feet are deep in sand as I watch the sea roll in.
I see the spit reaching out to the blurred horizon,
and there, a figure, mad, wind whipped and racing
stops to turn and reach for me with spider fingers.
A moment of fluid compulsion drenches the air,
the half-dead embrace of chilled need shudders about me.
My hands reach back to meet this despair,
and the frozen rain shreds the flesh from bone as I watch,
transfixed by the undoing of corporeal illusion.
To tendon, to bone, to dust and release.
What holds me together now? Desire, passion, fear.
I bleed promises on the shore,
till the sea rises with crimson lips
and kisses my spirit with terrible pleasure.