Early Morning Chesapeake

Trough the wind
I hear the calling of a swallow.
In his nearness
he bites off a wondrous tone.

Over the hills the moon
rises like a beacon,
and his whimper
is a raining sorrow
of an everlasting life.

And God hides and peers
through the forest of a song;
and the echo is death,
who hangs his head
in the dark silence
and broods his moaning mocking laugh.

Purple is the dark,
a swimming moon song,
full of glimmers, shimmers, echoes,
full of sighing murmurs
and the crash of tide
and frothing sea
giving a kiss of passion
to the shore-bound rocks.

My heart is black as night,
a gangrenous thing that pulses only in the dark
and oozes into a limpid puddle,
dying with the dawn .