are the mandates
obeyed by ocean waves?
And yet, how high
are the barricades
all of us face
as we try in our vain way
to over-complicate
their movements?
The manic morning
undulations and great sighs
of afternoon;
the silent senescence,
anointed
by the moonlight
and the overnight redoubling
of our decision
not to bend.
So this, then, will be left
as our crest
and our pinnacle:
our refusal to flow
or relinquish
our own edges,
to register the absence
and tremendous largess
of all of the others
who have broken
on that silent shore,
inexorably, before us
with our unfathomably
vast unwillingness
to depend.
