Lament for a sailor   Paul Dehn

Here, where the night is clear as sea water
and stones are white and the sticks are spars
swims on a windless mackerel tide
the dolphin moon in a soal of stars.

Here, in the limbo, where moths are spinners
and clouds like hulls drift ovehead,
move we must for our colder comfort,
I the living and you the dead.

Each on our way, my ghost. my grayling,
you to the water, the land for me;
I am the fat knuckled, noisy diver
but you are the quietest fish in the sea.