a poem i love
the white birds
If this is the day before noon,
I have wasted my chance to live.
The ocean of our forefathers dances
away from my toes; the town is sinking
from the horizon. My feet carry
a million years of dust north,
further north until I am alone
at the tip of the world.
Water is everywhere but behind me,
and with one more step I will fall
into it, headfirst to be cleaned in depths
that will never wash the earth . . . .
What a gift it would be to stream
my face through the fluid underside
and into open air again, trembled
beneath the white birds hunting
carrion among the rocks,
the ones who don’t come near me.
They are like messengers of God,
singing that flesh covered by water
is restored, not to be shattered
flat on the platter of earth.
This tide breaks on a forgotten point;
it is everywhere I have ever been.