One small boat pitched
on the dark sea — One child
cast up on the cold shore.
Here is the fulcrum of our age:
The bandit wind
has stolen the music of breath.
Now all roads west are
chuckablock with broken prams,
carts laden with bundled dreams.
So useless to write of this
safe by the warming fire,
an ocean distant.
Beside the railroad gate
ten thousand pairs of hands
reach out for water.
Behind them, fire, ahead
the ache of night — I cannot
suss the choice I'd make.
I have no words for this.
It moves from words
toward a deeper pulse.
And we are lost between
ocean and sky, with nothing
to hold but each other.
From Our Situation, 2018
First published in Words + Pictures, 2016