The king is dying,
memory fading.
Now honor is gone
now yesterday’s dinner
now mother’s hand stroking
the ermine collar
of her deathbed gown.
(For now, the world
flat and finite
like his mind. The ocean’s
crisp boundaries
spill over four corners
like memory, disappearing.)
The king orders
a fleet of glass galleons
set out to explore
the edge of the world.
They launch, crystal sails
aloft in the sun,
casting rainbows
through ocean spray.
(A century hence,
the world will be round
like a fruit:
one endless circumference.
Minds, too, become
deeper thoughts hidden
like icebergs
submerged in men’s souls.)
Sailing toward
the periphery
translucence deepens.
Ships pale, disappear,
til but one is left.
Atop the survivor’s mast
the king’s sole
remaining lieutenant
peers at knife’s edge horizon.
The world tapers
stretched thin. Sky bleeds
navy, royal, azure
fainter
to absence’s hue.
(World and man
exchange simplicity
for paradox,
linearity curving
swallows its tail.
The traveler’s straight path
leads home again,
in the end. His marriage
disintegrates
in childhood’s castles.)
Beyond, nothing
save slow cascade
of water pouring nowhere.
King’s faded schooner
balances on edge
one moment neither
within nor without.
Heavy, stern dips
mast creaks and shatters.
Tipping over
she falls
following oceans
over precipice
to comprehension,
lost.
