Again, the end of one life and the

            beginning of another. My mother

dies on someone else’s birthday, this

            devastating event someone’s best night

ever.  My shoulders ache, the

            wordless grief demanding at the same time

unknown hearts elsewhere swell with success

            and gratitude. Negative, positive,

and—for one who needs mass to know where

            his body is in space--ground, attachment

necessary as a root, sailboat

            useless without a keel, and you’re that drag

which makes movement forward possible,

            for me, balancing below the surface

with what’s been built above on a craft most

            clearly designed by someone else, yet

my sole inheritance.  Devils sprawl

            around tables below deck, do shots of

whiskey whether they’re happy, bereaved,

            or clinging somewhere in the middle, the

funereal found in the constant

            drive to drown nerves overwrought from coming

face to face for eternity with

            the human weakness of the day. We work

side by side together at the pumps

            like shanghaied sailors, the ocean breaking

in us with a boned anatomy

            on which too much depends, resisting the

blood’s urge to run itself aground, our

            potential hydrogen identical

to the sea, the diurnal tides lost

            to those who ignore the barometric

signs and to others who fail to see

            they’re nearing the equator, float marooned

in the doldrums with no provisions,

            poor notions of what it means to have a

sail, keel as important as the wind.