west

west is down the edge of wandering and forever i am turning to its undying pull
from the poles of being this is my direction and it is never releasing me
east is past west and beyond but never behind or back but always around and further down
i see the light lengthen my shadow from the dawn to the night in a chase against the night that never ends and i am struggling wandering always away and western to the seas and the islands and the distant memories of being chased to these sweet shores by memories that remember me a paddler of canoes across seas and skies and storms that blew me halfway to deaths door and struggled to a rocky shore where flowers fell from cliffs to the empty islands doorway to the seas and the singing and sweet lament of island girls for their men taken
never to return from the west and gone from loves embrace and always in the song and tender movement of the hips and arms and eyes that see beyond the western shores