A broken may desire to move
toward a healing
but the holistic is an arrogance
immune to affect.
Songs were spaced along
the lifeline, once.
They were married & buried
together: the loning
has kept its primitive chord
sculpture – pibroch
to the twelve bars of blue
predictability: a soothing
& a saying to keep
the unhale heartened:
a seventh leading back to
home key. A dry dock
for leaky vessels, a scuttle
of metal plates welded
by heat & rivet, "There, that'll hold."
Water, sparing not a drop
of empathy despite its buoyancy,
filled each lung & cabin,
corridor & trachea with its own
unleavened weight.
A wreath of white lilies on ocean's
disturbed surface hardly roots
grief to the spot any more than angst
acts as rudder for anyone's
unconscious. Steerage is a class act
to follow: depth measured
by ignorance's height above it.
When the captain was unspliced
from the yardarm
the tattoo on his ulna read
"If I'd've been a split stick,
I'd have savioured everyone."