many are the rivers.
many are the boats,
carrying the silent in each other's embrace,
not to a shore,
but across.

a paddle falls into water.
she looks into his sinewy eyes,
knowing the tear that falls
from his heart into her.

an albatross perches on a pillowy cloud
and announces, to himself:
"I am the wing and the wind 
and I sleep in the ocean."

the waters take the last paddle.
lip clutches lip, and the two sit, kissed,
thinking with locked hands and warming breath:
"glory to the boat, for it is ours!
glory to the sun, for it sets only once a day!"

then the waves,
the howling rattlers of dreams,
as you see
that the world will capsize,
encapsulating lives with a whiff of a dolphin.

it will be so,
but bring another eye - 
what sails in the boat is not love,
is not man or woman or oar -
it is a shiver,
and it can never
drown
in oceans.

10.3.98