now as the horizon evened and was empty-full
or would you say full-empty
about the shark tank that drew swimmers bled-
blue-traces racing orders round my head
for me the day would gently useless be
a yellowish sea turtle kind of day
and an exhale left me vast and near
down underneath my colder spine of fear

and as what you turned pearlescent grew
the violet dear and clearly breaking you
the cloud-gray whisper and the frothy wave
was toying with your tendered ankle bone
soft undulant sea-crinkled green
like the linen sheen across our fathers bed
as the tinfoil sun was flashing mean
against your pinking arms and shoulderblades

and as the quiet-crowded gloom below
accustomed stinging tears to witlessness
and the broken coral sharper needling
against your shins armorlessness
the looser webs of mer-light gyrating
grew grown inside and tidal-spectacled
and the massless intervening seemed
the famous nobody to prove you whole

what clever lover waiting down the stream
could hold your palace cool and fathoms deep
when the thunder-heading planet-threading way
of the underwater giant was floating
your skin the crizzling rainfall of red sugar
returned to birth a burnt and beautiful nude
and an undertowing current shaped
the lunar fasting of my stone-bone-home

it was just some local princess playing strange
along the undead continental shelf
an honored guest or angel amongst drowned ruins
the snowfall of those dropped and dropping teeth
and as the horizons blueing fuller loomed
like grief in visibility of itself
our rounding eyes were feasted futureless
and we grazed over the desolation of the reef

//