Horizons Poem by Seamus O' Brian

Your eyes and your heart
Lost to the horizon of
Another man's love.
Somewhere on another
Cragged coast, the tide
Straining to hold on
To the algae-slicked rocks
Falls back, imperceptibly,
Regretfully, wave after wave
Until the jagged crevices
Of the rocks are wantonly
Exposed to the avaricious
Eyes of the greedy gulls.
Exposed to the light.

And if on that distant tectonic
conjugation of sea and earth
There is a slackening,
Ought not here on this
Very coast, ought not
The fluid arms of the ocean
Return to embrace this
Shore with deepening rivulets
Of life? Where, oh now, is
This refilling of empty harbors,
The long anticipated buoyancy
Of rusting vessels, languishing
At anchor? Why still do I sink
In cloying sediments
Of interrupted dreams?

What devious compass led us
To this Delphian coast where
The tide recedes yet never returns?
What transit can measure
The line of sight from your eyes
to those crevices of jagged coast
where your hidden heart lies?
What sextant could steer me
To the latitudes lost
Between the north star
And the ragged edges
Of our disrupted dreams?

There, in that slackening wave
Have I cast that compassed aberration!
I will take your hollow eyes and
Sing into your soul the beacons
That have marked the channels
Of our lifetime together. I will
Whisper into your ears the steps
Of every lighthouse we have climbed
Clinging arm in arm, laughter and tears
Where so many rocky shoals
Have waited hungry for us.
I will tear open my heart
and pour into yours an ocean
that will devour the tides
and bury all the cragged shores.

And we will find our own horizon
Once more.