Swept in among the wave-suds,
moved gently out, and in,
flotsam, he lay, a log
to any shorewalker.
And one approached. He always came
at sundown.
Alive still? Yes!
The rescue crew he brought
churned up the shore, so that the slant sun
made a lengthening shadow behind
every clump, a dot at every grain.
Today, erect, the stranger
strolls past his unremembered
couch among the
shell-chips and weedy runnels.
And there before him, prone,
the swelling waters brim,
benign, bemusing:
“This watery world is flat, and every wavelet
is a homecoming from the bourne.”
It had taken a further journey for the
convalescent to
frame — and paint out — the lie.