Poetry
Jacob Dyer
For Unsplash+
Salt and Light
we are two blues
convincing the world
distance can look like devotion.
every morning
the sky lowers itself
until sailors swear
it has found the sea.
every morning
the sea borrows
the sky's color,
wears it
without asking.
one keeps birds
stitched between ribs of wind.
one keeps wreckage,
whale song,
anchors gone soft with rust.
neither speaks
the other's language.
still,
they spend whole afternoons
holding the same light.
the gull
crosses freely,
belonging
to neither.
by evening,
the sky begins
emptying itself
first
as shadow,
then rain.
the sea answers
the only way it knows:
lifting its body
toward a mouth
it cannot reach.
whitecaps
break into open hands.
The shoreline
pretends
to introduce them.
It has been lying
for centuries.
by morning
the sky is blue again,
the sea carries it
as though nothing
had happened.
and somewhere
between salt
and light,
the horizon keeps
its impossible promise
of “someday.”
Then, Myself
meteorology never interested me
as much as medicine
and then there’s astrology, but i
prefer the astronomy behind it
literature is what i live for,
though it runs on love and longing
theology, though, is where we most often meet
and where i question what threatens faith
radio shows bring light into your eyes
though not as much as hopeless romance
caffeine is another conversation,
though not one we savor like capitalism
i ramble on and on
about everything
about nothing
and you listen
and you stay
as if time is the only enemy
keeping you from me
but time has decided,
this time, for good
you are the very last person
who will ever know who i am
after you,
there will only be grief,
and then,
myself.