Swans’ furious wings
in millions, in violence,
landing at graphite bay
sunder to a feathered lather,
light as beer’s head,
on the strand.
And so it is,
the fury of nature
that batters and drowns
next day
is a plaything for children,
froth to blow off their palms.
Her breathing
shallow, laboured;
life hanging
from a fraying string
and I searching for the right words,
the last words.
What are the words
that should sail the auditory canal
into her final minutes?
What can I say
into the turbulence of her breathing
to repay her love,
allay the fear,
lessen the hardship?
And now, years on,
trying to remember what I did say
as she bobbed on the tide of her dying;
moments when loving care
was reduced to the most caring words;
trying to remember if I had the words.
The wind from the west made the trees uneasy;
a glowering sky heaving pent-up violence;
the people on the seashore shrinking
to tiny letters in black print under Himalayan sky;
the ocean stepped backwards into distance.
Cracks of lightning shattering heaven;
fish, metallic splinters, breaking the ocean’s hide,
falling back, fragmented anger;
the bellowing cumulus thunder;
a hole in the far horizon where the sun hides down a burrow.
On this empty page,
I suddenly see your face,
a watermark.
Time-drained,
blurred features, mute;
loved face.
Memory,
a boulder dragged behind,
still sweeter
than vacuity;
so smile,
holographic smile.
I put my back to it, push the boat onto the limestone-coloured sea,
where the water takes it onto its own shoulders and I,
with feet firmly dug into the ribs, can row into the eternal.
The sea slams against the hull with my every stroke:
the clockwork of the ocean, of the universe,
inseparable from my blood’s tides.
I trust its speech resounding in the hollowed chest beneath me;
I believe in the anointing of my face with brine;
I get the measure of myself from none but the ocean.
Her eyes bombed out,
mouth a crater,
rubble her skin.
The war on her face;
no matter what face,
this face will always be beneath.
These, millions,
devastated landscapes;
and hers, to have and to keep.
