The Sailor

You were great in the 
evenings, on the porch
with sun-tea in our
bellies. Stories erupting
from the fountainhead, 
old sea stories,
the ghosts who wandered
the shoals unmapped. 
You stood waist deep
and challenged them
to dice.


You were too young to 
have gone and incurred
such a brine, you were
full of the sea, it was
in your eyes, the storms
of the cape.
The rain plinked on 
the roof, a symphonic
call from untuned violins,
great timpani's rolled over.
And your snoring
from the other side,
the lowing of the lighthouse.


In your bones I saw
a decay like weathered
decks, barnacle caked 
undersides. Your lungs
swamped with cold air,
the porch was traded
for the sofa
for the bed
all winter long.


It washed over,
loved you more
than my bones could 
weather and bear,
the masts crack in
half in storms like these.
She was rocking your hands,
pulling your breaths
until they turned bloody.


Body battered like
the coastline's jagged edge,
great boulders falling
into her wake. 
She hauled up your blood onto
our sheets,
in the night 
your body quaked in the tides.


Anchored inside you,
there was an unrest I 
couldn't satisfy,
the green waves
toppled over out bodies,
and in the morning


you had returned to her.