from this sea [2010]

an antediluvian universe beauty is not
dangling before new daylight
well-traveled and weather-beaten
netted this morning

a seasoned box
  three scrawled names faded upon its side planks 
afloat in the shallows
  horizon-haloed
compares to the least likely vessels
  ones with the planks of twos
while
in the same harbor     out aboard the tallest ship
precious coordinates
  being scratches in a nautical log
have been wiped away
  a season's mathematical waste
by sweeping black-wave minuses
carried back     to this coast     to tattered toe           
a knowledge     where the sand line is eternal
     and beauty is now not

as the clicking and flapping ones approach
discorporate nails feign a scrape of the bulging box hull
they of a brought forth residual consciousness
themes saturated by decades of silent cycle drowning 
and an untied burlap sack
once thrown weighted from the aft
drifts deteriorating free     an ironic presentation of this sea

turning
in the evolving morning light
  which is quite enough to see by     no confusion
  even the ghosts     and their ancient line     are well illuminated
I realize
the path to the old boathouse has been surrendered of the reeds

and prehistoric creatures have come to land behind me