A Thoreau Twilight

ECOLOGY AND YOU: A MEDITATION

This place is a shelter from my damaged reflection
(for no mirror could engage an eye
that lays behind a coffin's lid).

Even a corpse may be lulled to sleep,
swaddled in sea-foam blankets and
infinitely useful to hungry fish that
school around the husk, fighting the cold falls,
fleeing the careless fishermen,
swimming, because the current yet moves.

"I would love you," she whispered,
sleeping fast, all to see the man that colors her dreams at
sunrise.
In the water, only, does she nibble at my throat
(and in darkness alone do we seem to find
that I can synchronize my body to the smoothness of hers,
crest and trough).

That flawless bank of sand, though, is never truly a woman's fantasy,
not in the ways of that orange peacock that is the sun.
He keeps her eyes toward the sky,
and O! one day...but
will she ever learn that you cannot stare so long?
I may be cold and deep, but my movement never sleeps,
never escapes beyond that horizon, always stays at this single level, all
for her!

At night, though, when the sun has faded purple and
the sea is left to roiling tides,
I caress the rounded cliffs that face me
and wrap myself around her beaches;
I trickle deep into her every thought and whisper myself into her heart.

But when the tides roll back, the sun returns and
that promontory is beyond my reach (until the next revolution).
Slighted by guilt, I avoid reflections, lest she remind me
that I am not the stuff of dreams.
I lie myself beneath the water's surface,
feel her feed at my familiar husk and drown
usefully
in her love.