Mary Celeste

Blistered and marooned
by the heat of my divided spirit,
stalled on a spit far from solid land,
I’ve become the wreck I’ve always expected.

But if I founder here, after all this time
wondering when it would happen and what moment
would put me over the edge at last,
it will not be without a gentle, bitter laugh

at how quietly I’ve ended up here now:
no huge explosion of pain, no rejection
of my being, no shattering revelation
of my own tiny nature.  No:

I end here thinking of nothing but fatigue,
the heavy silence in my hold, beams apparently solid
but straining to hold themselves to one another
ad ready to give out.  I have become

a Mary Celeste of a man, all the contents
intact, only the driving force absent, and when I’m found
they’ll see the mystery of me:
no one aboard and the ship still ready,

its sails vacant in the still, hot air;
a line trailing behind, attached to nothing;
cries of seabirds falling flat, the beams answering
as they grind themselves apart on this sliver of sand.