Poetry
by Gryffyd Eamonn Dempsey
A TIDE'S TALE
Newcomers clamber over me
I, who am the Forgotten wreck
who once heard a beacon
and now beckoned to adventure
these to their turn hither
They reckoned on treasure
not this desert of the disappeared
salted with tattered ships on shoals
of savaged temples puffing mournful smoke
We thought ourselves laggard saints
of explorers who created by dead prayers
a new crusade, and though arrived late for
succor were content with rescuing relics
not lives
Falling planet-ward in greedy long
spirals, gleaming arrivals on
plagued shores
armed to plunder any lot or legacy
Pell-mell this loathsome trap's honeyed baubles
betrayed us and we stumbled
all lost all taken
A measure of time passes, dragged
like mist by lingering ghouls,
over my fright, this grave, these eras' bones
Save our souls I should shriek to the void
but they're as long dead as my voice
my rescue as distant as salvation
my rest disturbed only by new seekers
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