The sea licks and licks, a metronome,
the dull tick tock of nevermore.
Her tongue massages the rocky shore
hour after hour for centuries
until she coughs up a creeper
and takes back one of her own.

Words are just means to an end,
daisies in the chain of ideas,
but they have a pull of their own
magically extracting niblings from the rubble— 
pickaxes leveraging blood-slick geodes, 
midwives delivering sprays of orchids.

Tuesday dawn, dew point loosening,
Lucifer in saffron tights.
Concertina wire surrounds our hutch.
The wind repeats our oldest prayer
every night in howls and gasps.
The more we long for the less we have.