From the black height of Atlantis
From the black height of Atlantis you dived
A seabird plunge into swollen water,
I at the shore, wrapped in borrowed garments
Immaculate white, escaping the heat
Still a sudden breathless knot-bite of loss
The prising open before you emerge
Only later, pressed to your skin, there came
The slow blood-trickle of rapid descent;
I buried you with stones, laid them over
Each visible part, gently, one by one
The shape of you took years to submerge
Beneath an eternal spread of stone pine.
print version