The Sea's Eulogy

Within us, the river meanders, whispering

the surges that cradle us awake, while

above, the sea stitches itself to land—

it is the constant tender theft, the granite

metamorphosis, sand-laden, where it inhales

what can't be held—silvered relics, codified 

in saltwater incantations: starfish, horseshoe

crab rib, vertebrae of an eroded leviathan;

where tongues of tide unfurl, presenting

delicate algae, tentacles of sea anemones—

it drifts back our wounds, the fractured net,

the splintered pot, the oar adrift, stories

of alien dead men. The sea holds myriad

voices, it is cathedral and crypt, echo

multitudes of gods, their mirrored refrains

untangle in unraveling, where the marrow

of the world's elegy adjoins flesh to wave.