Sacks of Us

Half apples, the goods delivered,
The séance of sleep and sin broken by morning.
The mourning of lost women,
The siren songs of sea faring people and
All of those men and women who never returned.

Turn again the window dressing at the eyes of sadness,
The varnish on the balustrade,
Mascara run as tears sliding down the cheek
To drop on the chipped paint of the sill.
To go for a walk in a black dress,
A burqa in the sun.

Shade of the eyes.
No one need know but then how do I know myself.
Kind lady with an instrumental assiduity,
A charm if you will for the night demons circling
Like flies in the day time or dumb moths at night,
Bumping the light.

It’s a heavy lift and a big ask
To bring all of the bodies up from the sea
Like a trawler when there were fish,
Bringing up a bulging net of life, soon to be
Bodies of our indiscriminate industry.

A hap hazard guess says 20 million broken women
Stitched up the laces of our windows,
Tending babies on their breasts and backs,
Trawling the murky waters themselves and
Skinning the scales of purplish fish
Whose mouths gape the obscene maw of their deaths, air hunger and gills.

Put us all tightly in dry graves or
By fire let the world easily digest our ashes.
This burial by sea, with no body home but
Splinters of the certain wreck,
Is more than a dish towel wiping can stand up to,
Grave and circling the counter top,
Wiping and dabbing at the eye.

Great herd of us on the move,
Hooves and bovine eyes,
Gentle but full of fear for our blades,
Long necks like ideas and knives.
If we are given the tools, we use them.
If we are given time, we sing the sadness
Of ones left out like sacks in the sun.

Harvest of the bean and word,
The implications secured to undo us,
Pull us away from ourselves and each other
As a steam ship leaving port or an airliner
Picking up engine speed and lift with one of us on board with the others
And one left behind thinking of traffic strategies for the way home.

No way home.
Under the waves
Water boarded,
Near death,
The refugee and his stalwart wife
Both holding tears for the loss.