Starless Night

Starless night.

Cold grey breaths of cloud conquer the sky.

Ever above, the endless shapes emerge,
and struggle,
and fight with their brothers,
till one is victorious,
then he fades.

Fades indeed, for they are luminous,
aglow of themselves and only of themselves,
for who said the oceans’ roaring, moaning offspring,
filling the heavens,
was dark?

No, they shine with a shadow-wrought light,
calling back to their ancient father,
the ocean mighty – loved and feared by man –
freedom and power incarnate –

fettered still to earth unyielding,
thrashing,
foaming,
ever causing rock to split
and grind to grit
but bound, even by sand, to keep his limit.

The clouds cast their half-light upon their father’s face,
that he might see them,
that he might sorrow.

And they are reborn,
and they are slain,
and they never once relent.

Red morning threatens.

Even the cold earth cannot help but shed a few tears,
as it holds the ocean in his twisted fate,
deathless and Promethean,
seeing his children fleeing,
and yet sure to return,
a certainty,
an absolute,
a thing abhorred by every law of nature,
abhorred by the law of the Earth,
and most of all abhorred by the clouds...

The vagrants pass by overhead,
wandering free,
wandering dead.