Almost Composed

Katabasis

April 9, 2014

No army marches faster.
Having beaten us, the clouds
dropped their arrowfall into the bay,
blessing our deepest failure.

News reached me on the wind.
Yet more ranks of salt and hate
but there I was, sharing a mind with water
after months of hard dryness.

Stars gleamed like arrow wounds.
There was great, roiling joy
in leaving this land under darkness.
We carried our corpses across waves

to meet the gale and what lived yet
of the lives we could have had.
The further I looked ahead, the further
storm and suddenness looked into me.