On the Tilted Water

A lost bell of dusty brass

  rocks slowly on the tilted water,

    leaving the gentle evening to its own company

It becomes anybody's guess

  whether it still has the gumption to sing,

    ring or clang with any clarity at all

Fog horns lifted from dreary spirits

  chase their fading selves across the

    dimly lit surface of this particular dream world,

Never catching anything

  beyond some diffuse sense of themselves,

    as directionless as the dark itself

Lovers twirl by in sweeping dances –

  churning tides and tight-knit eddies

    in search of sounds that rise yet never fall –

While barely-floating spirits

  row their aching bones along the

    way the wind might have carried them

Had it been there to guide them

  through the quiet calm of approaching night,

    in search of shining reverberations of the soul.