Dimly they turn and return,
gathering broken sherds
they reefed against the world,
each sorting out his own
to piece the shells into a whole
and find the echo lode.
5
Blind as a crab in the sand,
waiting for the tide to slack,
I feel through my hands blank,
knowing nothing that they can not reach,
yet groping to believe these
signs of emptiness real.
Ground, sea, sky, all are merged
in the surrounding surf,
where everything's reversed,
where breath is radar to itself,
antennaed to gray silence,
and only I move, nothing else.
6
Along the coast a lone train
tolls the night, slowing its race
to a throttled brake
as a hand plows the mist
to draw a moving bridge
across the mainland's tip.