SHORE BOUND STRANGER
Candice James
Copyright 2010
The moon hangs like a luminous disc
Over the pitch black onyx lake,
Smooth like a slab of polished marble
Greedily feeding on the shaft of bright.
Shore bound sits a shadowy man.
His torso is canoed into the trunk of a tree.
He’s mesmerized, quietly witnessing
The newborn spiders in the sky,
Stars climbing through the floorboards of dusk;
Glittering sequins on a black velvet curtain.
Some grant wishes. Some sprinkle heartaches.
The stranger on the shore gazes up at them
Wrapped in a baptismal blanket of drizzling rain.
The cry of a loon slides across the lake,
Like an ice skate, scarring the surface.
The stars fall with razor sharp edges
Cutting the stranger free.
A stillness creeps in, beckons,
Lures the shore bound stranger.
Unbound he stands trembling.
With a sudden deep knowledge,
He approaches the shore like a child.
At the edge he becomes a tiny wave
And mingles with the water, the loon,
The stars, the sky and the moon.
The stranger on the shore slips
Silently into the legacy of the lake,
Unshackled, shore bound no more,
Never to be a stranger again.