Sea Labyrinth (Nov. 2004)

Just beneath my trackless
ocean course between
this lonely shore and you
there lies a labyrinth,
an ancient code of your travail
which I enter as I launch
and wander as I sail,
finding the next isle
at its center not quite
sea or land but both
& you freshly departed,
the water in the well
there almost burning
with your blue, harrowed
to the dregs in the
lost carouse of you.
My job as I see it
from this chair today
is to make that
circuit canonical
and nude, an abbot
with his psalter
intoning lines over
waves that sing back
with nipples bigger
than a mouth: that
in those Nones of
stern devout your
gauzy peachy salt-
glazed beachy
pulses bossa rum sashay,
causing archangels
to go stout and
clamor for a fall,
just one, a good long
pussy plunging
dive down to the
saltiest names
of God. I see ‘em just
beyond the breakers
tumbling in a row,
those pairs of blessed
ankles and pale soles
vanishing in blue,
each like a book
tossed on the wave,
another vespering
poem. My job is
sound the depth
of that well
and count every bed
that’s lost down there,
each an inkling
burning with a desire,
an arrow’s shiver
up the mortal sense
that you’re staring
back up from that murk,
imploring all my seed
and ink and nouns.
My job’s to make
that view a shore
enfolded by incessant
tide, each wave an
antiphon and greeting
and taunt to mount
the coracle again
and chance once
more the main’s
desperately empty dazzle
with that spiral
dancing floor hidden
a mile of fathoms down
where gods and whales
and undressed lovers
sport and roam. Each
plunge and peramble
here comes to you
at last, or at least
that resonance
which hallows these
ears and haunts
my turn back home.
Each return is to
some higher deeper
ground where even
less is known and
the tide pounds harder,
like a kiss, a clench,
the next blue
widening door.