night swimming in San Antonio Bay

fallen below another crest

he watches from the resting trough

as unsheathed silver furls forward

spurred on by leagues of fallen generals

the unforgiving eyes of the deep

raised arms and the forehooves of the saddled

wild horsehair and the whites of many eyes

ahead the black beach waits glistening

slick as whale skin

waves collapse on the silences in their eyes

overwhelming themselves as if to some end

but with the shore rejecting their finality

each again retreats behind the curtains

of the deep as if there were safety there or need

the bleached white rocks jut from the shallows

like the heads of salt blind ancient mariners

awaiting the mercy of moontide

swimming these waters he feels as he did then

that there is no loss but that there is no loss

over there the purple sand absorbed fortunes

lives backwards flowing to the one womb

the red shift in a blue eye and he was sure

he was unsure of what he shouldered

but dying always and anyways

in a blood clouded marsh

he waited with lifeless stars and shells

till dawn cracked and he woke to the great fans

in the sky and the bare feet

if only a tide would come to raze this

to lift it away all draped in white

spread it to a thin film be

little it to a shell in his shoe

he would shake it out and rejoin

the swelling tide