I thought to try peace, once, and
returned to you, chastened, a helpmeet;
but you laughed at me and

said i could never be anything i am not.
windburned, seaborne, I am more vessel

than captain, more belly than prow.
in that long, grey trek I thought to follow you

back home, or past home, back up

to dry land or the beacon of your face.

i could never have succeeded.

I thought if I held a course I might steady, but 

creatures of the swell do not stay still.

I idle now in the trough 

and return the slow, blank stare of the water 
in the rising wave.