The right to shape

A root out of the parched ground grows still
From the sheer sand side of a blank hill
Shaped by words and time into the hull
Of some pale ship, overturned, a skull.

Our vehicle of the death-lean days,
His moveable feast, colliding ways
Of seeing, yet of not seeing, blind
To being by not being flesh, mind

—Is altogether thrown back on stones
That border sea disputing who owns
The right to shape, by taking the shore,
Or by revenge, raise the ocean floor.

God-damned virtue, costal fires that turn
Into a mist of cancers, boil, churn,
Take the gifts unopened or in doubt,
Seed the clouds that rain and put them out.