-I- The sea sickles Tears and eats the shore Culls the frigid burrs Of plants more often wintry Than all the spiky seeds of summer -II- Upon the twirling bay Stand columned ghouls Stretched like a phantom totem pole Reaching outward and upward To gather all the rays of sun Where they sway as death sways As she drifts -III- It was a harmless guarantee A suicide of pixies When she embraced the trigger And soliloquized on faith Of all hallowed floods Where demons withdraw For the Earth to call them graves And sleep to a purring gun’s song -IV- Oh shame be strong Like drunken feral fevers That write white lines Of honesty in shapes unseen And mock the selfless prayer To see the pinnacle fall Into what the ocean like lithe Branches happens to be Alive and frequently mortal