Littoral

Littoral

Cliché tinge of mauve,
This dusk's longing is all whisper
and no wolf. 

A dusk mothering golden,
hanging on bowed sunflowers,
quieting the buzz of dandelion seeds
with a cloying love.

And how can we, the patina-tongued,
sly the hush
and cast our libretto
past the slimming horizon's bare blue lip;
a chorus in complete otherness.

How can we hymn,
accompanying the end of a day
we have no right to live;

We sing as foreigners
at odds with light-play on dappled saplings
and the whiskers of beach grass quivering the last green

The sea's brine and our eyes to match,
our ballad unknowable in the biting foretime pale,
as we become numb—yet still coupled;
mutable wounds in the weather's touch.



By John Carroll Walls & Reka Jellema
Copyright August 2016