Indifference

These moonlit seas

glint in vain.

An orb of butter,

spread across sea?

I am oblivious.

I have thoughts

too deep for tears:

irretrievable as smoke,

formless as midnight.

Submerged in rumination

like shadowy mangroves,

inundated at high tide:

gasping a low and ceaseless sigh;

roots burrowed deep in the ground;

and branches subduing moonlight.

The full moon tonight is white

as a ghost and terribly upset,

dragging the sea after it like a dark crime,

to the sharp edges of the night.

A melancholy frowns

and spurts in patches on the water

towards these mangroves

where sunset fades, chill-sparse

in and around drowned hedges.

The majesty of this night is not for me.

Somewhere in this fathomless night,

two lovers walking along the long beach,

together as two gulls gliding in the wind,

may justify the moon’s beauty.

But as for me,

like dark mangroves,

I do not hear

these crashing waters.

And I am blind

to the glinting

of these moonlit seas.