As I watched the ocean with its breakwater crests
rise and fall with the undulations of the distant calamity,
an image of a perfect sphere afloat on the sea
from which all ripples come visited me.
I laid my lumbering eyes to rest for a time
and opened them the moment that the rain
caressed my face: the salty sting, the bitter taste
of ocean air's assault upon my nose.
It seemed that, then, that moment held the globe
from which the waves commenced their crash,
and so I wandered down across the sand's stinging surface, unafraid,
down across the dark, sucking sand wet with tide's touch,
and, salt stinging my eyes, my stiffened hand shielded my gaze
and I swear that the sphere stood there, just past the point
the world's best swimmer could reach and return
without the final plunge of full fatigue.


Penned by my hand on the 23rd of Sarapin, in the year 305 AF.