Gambling moon
whittles the darkness,
daggering down
to the vortex of the eye.

Sea-shell spirals
a voice from ghostly corridors;
winds from the coiled
throats of sirens
ten thousand years ago.

Maids who sang to men
out of a shipwrecked night,
as moons daggered down
to the whirlpools of their eyes.

Tresses of ocean
poured slowly
their streams of music woven by the
seamstress of the moon,
songstress of the sun:
skeins of light
unfurled from the stars,
like a curtain of birds from the sky.

Voices of shells,
tresses of sea,
fragments of ghosts
in a bubbled shawl ---
ocean specters
cannot rest.

Sirens call you seaward
from death's cold chasms,
companion you down to
the vaults of the deep,
till the moon's honing light
deals you out,
one by one,
like a flayed deck of cards
with a fling of its flickering knife.