Letter to a Lost Lover

The ocean brings us beautiful corpses
So that we do not forget.
But what looks (from a distance)
Like a buried behemoth of a shell
Is just a sheared top slice resting flat.
Perhaps its ghost of a body
Rattles around the seabed
Whispering watery curses.

Seashells in a spray of white
Could be a sleeping Titan's spine
(Like when I woke up on the sand
To find the wind had covered me
Toe to crusted eyelash, sand
In my mouth, sand
In the salty pages of my book.
I was just waiting for you to come back.)

Still waiting, I'll walk down the beach.
It's grey and blue and green
In sight and smell and
The jetsam of man is one with the rest.
That's not a washed-up jellyfish there,
It's a plastic bag -
That's not a rusty iron ring here,
It's the broke back of a horseshoe crab. Dead.

I'd love to sob into the sea
And confess all my sins, swim
And wash them away.
The ocean doesn't know.

You could bathe one million evil doers
Then strain the ocean with a sieve
And still not find
One grain of sin.