To Be Worn Openly at the Wrist, or at the Chest and Hidden

If I believed in a god, he would be a sea god, like the sea

in its predictability—now approach, now recede—beneath

such a god I would not mind, I think, being the shore, say of the sea

what you will, it’s the shore that endures the routine loss

without which what strategies would there be for softening

the hollowness that any victory, give it time, comes with,

how curb the risk of arrogance, with its doomed but

not undangerous hound, complacency?

... I made this for you—

put it on. I know it’s not going to matter whether the decisions

I made were the ones eventually I even meant to make, or

should have, or should have thought maybe more than

twice about. What’s history anyway, except—according to

the latest mouth saying so—just what happened: I flourished

undramatically, to no apparent purpose, like pretty much

everyone. The sea dragged the shore; the shore suffered the sea.