Sarah Fox

Thanatopsis

Night settles over our temple of squander, and
I’m shackled to a lighthouse, spinning
over great granite rocks, the foam flying
up like sweat from a black ox. I’ve been told
there’s a murmur in my flow, a thread of thorns
damming back any dull inheritance of Salvation.
I’m trying to pray past the luminous slag but my praying
grows vulgar and burning. Like autumn, I am crested
with flame, plumed by the wind coming in.
And though the wind is not malevolent, I myself am
not a leaf on a tree. I’ve been told to hold fast
to a pole, to grab for whatever rushes by,
to prepare for visions of transparent worlds
and the specks lying stillborn beneath them. But I am
harnessed to the summons of a vine, hoodwinked,
prodigal. In the interest of time the sun
has wound itself down as autumn’s
rude bulletin announces departure, and night—
that confessor of endings, that cloaked
face of our last acquaintance—drags me,
spinning, through its weathers and its seas.

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