Outrigger

I know every robe of light is edged
with a hem of dark stitching and the sea
is always raising and lowering its curtains.

Once when I put my arms around you  
I couldn't hear the crash of waves. 
These days are loud, though: 

the billow of wind, the sermons 
of thunder; the undercurrent of all 
nostalgias turning into something

we only think we understand. O trigger
releasing a spring, tensing a mechanism,
seething with too much feeling.

O outrigger. I am an island and you are 
an island and everyone else is an island 
and we could be an archipelago.