It is not so far as it might seem to ocean.
A difference of hours, a difference of miles and I am here
and the great water is there. This place needs me
but my soul has gone to sea. Jagged opened window envelopes
lay stretched upon the table but the gulls cries
echo in infinite space. On the back of one
I make my calculations but the breaker's sweep
soon erases the march of men on temporary earth.
My tiny scratchings, smaller than a child's cough in the dead
of night amount to less than a hundred thousand lives
lost as one to the deep. Hardship is a lonely craft,
so says the desperate cloth of ages strung
against the wind. I bear my fears while sinew plies
the rope of providence. This the work of ordinary men
while the tempest looms on a dark horizon.
Tomorrow I will make my way, but my soul looks back
and sees this coast no more.