Sail

The trick is the flow. Little fish with storms on their 
minds.
              Stones don't reveal

what they covet today, but I know them.

                 I gather scraps and throw them back,
throw them back to the waves
                       even as they climb toward my room.

                         So where to go when my pockets are
light?

                     Night-shy, evening shells--
                  all eyelids and ears.

The glinting blades and their kindred---do they ever say, 
                  no one ever, clean start, and
      clean, stark, smoothed galleries within galleries 
    I want
emptied of desire, but geled with color and domes of sea-
sweets.

                   Look at the lapses in between stars,
                      vertebrae washed up at my feet.

From Ariadne's Island by Molly Bendall. Copyright © 2002 by Molly Bendall. Reprinted by permission of Miami University Press. All rights reserved.