for Tom McGrath

We have all the poems about darkness and hidden water,
sad attempts to take us away from ourselves,
to find the boats
without captains that will return us to the sea,
will float us into perfection,
perfect sailors of the unconscious.
Is solitude so bleak?
Do we become perfect as we strip our lives of affection,
is snow blindness the final absolution?

It is winter now in Saint Paul. I am alone,
I love my teacup with its bird under the curved flower,
the way sunlight illuminates the little clouds of dust-hair in my room
and in the evening the sound of a radio floats in from down the street,
the voice of the announcer sad in its forced intensity.

Voice,
they would give you a funeral at sea,
but you’ll come back,
message scribbled in a bottle
crying for help
because we always do,
no matter how long
to finger
the stone harp of purity
in the coldest water
of the most inhuman ocean.