days_unfolding | Poem (Reply)

For some reason, the poem isn't showing up now, so here it is.

Adrift

Who knows when the rope began to fray?
With one strong tug, a strand just snapped,
Increasing the strain on its sibling strands,
Until they all failed, and he drifted off.

The shockwaves pulse from wire to wire,
Farther and farther from where he went adrift,
Until we all gather, arms entwined,
To make a whole of the fragments left.

The ocean wonders why we suffer so,
What's done is done, and done before;
We believe we failed to hold him here.
We were not strong enough, but if more--

And him--he was captain as well as ship,
How could he head where we are not?
(Forgetting how often we find ourselves
Landing far from our chosen port.)

And we disperse to our separate ports,
To anchor, hammer, tie our lives down.
We light candles for the long night's watch.
But instead of him, the sun appears,
And we blow our candles out.

Poem

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