Final Poet

The final poet
Is a rocky pier
Who gurgles exclamations---
Bits of things
snatched back and judged by the growling surf.

Jagged edged plastics,
charred branches
broken shells,
an orange sponge
rhythmically slapped into hollows of rocks.

At a stone’s throw in the grip of a tossing wave
A salty tongue licks clean the rusted limbs
Of a shipwreck,
Whose emaciate wrist
clutches down into final grip
naming man’s last thing---

It is the word of the final poet.

The poet startles green life
And crablike---
sideway scurries
From its meaty feast.

The pier calls the step
Beyond comfort and things wrought by man
Beyond descriptive language
And concern for clarification,
Into final words
minerals smashed clean in the mist.

On salty air
he soars
Without concern
For what is left behind
She weeps over broken things
And promises and trusts;
There are no pillars to lean upon
Something in the wine
Rends her mind.
Betraying what is dear.
Silly chalice!
Foolish thirst!

“I cannot bridge every fall of water
and so face a full night of silence
from my tower.
Fickle constellations---
Fickle companions!”

Terrible beauty seizes his mind.
The rocky pier draws a line into the sea
And cradles the jagged pieces
Tossed by crushing surf.
The day has laid down its treasure.

She drifts away on memory,
On long drawn sketches and voices.
The horizon recedes before her confidences,
Scraps of paper litter the tawny field;
poems stripped bare in wild winds and
Sunny bright mornings

This poem, too, is a line drawn between what is tossed up in verbal game
And the crackling of all that is left behind.