Aral Sea

We were

slender then

Youthful fingers tracing taught skin, pulsing over ribs

Our fishing
done we

shared the night, starlit on this divan of sand

Years have
fled like tides.

Our fishing hulk lies sleeping where once she moored

Hull bones

bleached

reaching whale-boned to our stars, her planks taken to
make chicken
sheds

Years have
fled like tides

Lying my heart to the sand I hear the long lost

sea, and
your breath

I ask the blazing night: Can an old man be fool enough

to call
the tide
to turn?