A Woven Line

    Old sea-captain rests in neat little cottage by the sea
         - Sabian symbol for 13 degrees Leo

 He wakes from dreams of knots, or nets,
 a sort of word-play in which lines entwine
 into a sling for catching unstrung rhymes.
 The rocking sing-song teases him from sleep.

 And so he lies here on the dark-side of dawn,
 under a great dry ocean of stars, those bright
 over-hands across the intervals of night.
 Beyond his window, a sweep and chirp
 of surf that sounds like all the sea’s bats
 coming home to roost in shingle, settling
 their tidal wings to sleep until the next
 incarnation of the moon.

             He doesn’t go to sea
 except in dreams. Today, he’ll gather
 what it brings: shells and fishing floats
 in bubbled glass and cork, wave-rubbed spars
 and sculpted driftwood, everything remade
 by salt and sand. Each form individual
 with all its details gone. He’ll sort and mend,

 a way of knotting time into the net laid
 over sky and sea. The space between
 the netted twine is for breathing out
 and into, for letting thoughts billow
 into waves. For working arthritic fingers
 into bowlines, over-hands and the fixed
 square-knot. For stars in their intricate
 infinite figure-8s of time.

Previously published in Louisiana Literature