Even Now

Leeward Danger

The sun is low, near its demise, on the sea's horizon.
Even the breakers are seen by a child as pulling down
The very sun itself in their grasps clenched white;
And the clouds mount to the heights and so weight down
      the sun, burning red in the evening.

From out across the shallows, the sound of the surf
Upon the coral reef has its alluring charm to the unsuspecting:
      even now, the skeletal remains of a sloop
      finally give way to the turbulent, wrenching waters
      on the coral--full of its own deceptive beauty,

The child cries;
A man weeps to the sky.
But the weeping is only
                to be lost in the settling fog.
Even now, the moon is only something vague
                hung in the heavens.
For the sun, in its apparel red,
Succumbs to the night so oppressing.

A sloop is to windward,
Beating away from the land to its lee
With the reefs lashing out,
Foaming white in eternally unrested rage.

Hard-pressed to the wind,
And with double-reefed main and storm jib,
Yet, the land looms ominously to the lee.
The bow rises to each wave,
And so it falls in the trough,
Spray rushing across the deck into the faces.
Caught in a current and a headwind
(lest the wind veer around to the stern)
Surely tragedy awaits:
Its fingers ready to greedily grab
Away the vision given.

Yet, was not the sun aglow in varied hues of red
As it left us to the night?