He ran out of words right about the time

his hope hit a wall like winter in June.

Lucidity escaped through loss, and

a life runs its twisting course

beside another’s parallel stream, just out of view.

 

Where to the waning West became of

words that once transfixed golden-souled,

silver-penned pirates of the journey?

They scaled the hull of pitch and yaw ships

laden with gifts from the sand of distant shores.

 

There it is again, once song of the Muse,

now the Siren’s cry like a whip of lustrous thought,

piercing ears, thirsty for the music of sojourn.

“Listen, listen,” she sings and, by singing, hopes

to be free from something that never bound her.

 

He would answer but his voice is drowned

in the shriller insistence of a mermaid’s lonely tale.

A single wave-tossed rock provides her stage.

But loudly though she sings, louder still the waves

that divide. All others are silenced against her solemn tones.

 

Laboring under misapprehension of invisible dangers,

she notices not that all ships have left. The song she

knows well has merely chased all hope of rescue.

Soon, her shrinking solo speaks no longer to gods nor men,

for without a voice, there are no more voices.

 

Picture found here