THEN and NOW

Foghorns lowing in humid voices, 
ward off terrible nights, just terrible, 
rattling putty-loose panes in your 
windows staring blindly at fronds 
madly slapping at wind but you sleep  
I had been sleeping, my brother 
but now I am awake in my child’s 
room in the night watching twinkle 
lights on boats pitched in the bay’s 
foamy throat, horns calling to us 
to you lost 
in fog wallowing into swells 
it is as if your absence opens  
the sea’s chasm now, it coughs, 
 and you still sleep with deep 
meaning forever through the end,  
carelessly listening to the foghorns 
praying their baritone chorus over 
a signal light flashing from voice 
to voice and I tremble, pull the 
coverlet taut across my child’s  
breast and when I turn from 
the window and from the restless 
sea, from loss, from you, the room 
fills with dark forest lush with vines 
we’ve  never seen, frogs croaking 
songs we’ve never learned, will 
never know, but the anguish we’ll 
never lose in the voices of engulfing 
darkness, moaning your name 
Richard and now that I am alone 
I’m ready  to confess the awful pain 
twisting my conceited heart it 
was some trivial dispute that carries 
 me here, my arms full of ghosts, 
 of roses, to kneel at your feet 
almost ready to see how at each 
turning we grew and I chose this way,  
this place and and you another but 
now this, this converging of ocean 
and earth with horns deeply chanting 
I can keep going if I listen, if I feel 
where I cannot breathe, if I will begin 
without you, horns lowing your name 
east through the fog,  to meet your 
rising light standing at water’s edge 
at this void beyond voids where 
we’ll once again share our child songs 
in this empty space where love speaks 
in the fog, at this place, Land’s End.