When feeling down in deeper depths,
Self-loathing flooding ten regrets,
The sure bouy’s back and surfacing fast
On waves that whisper ‘never last‘.

There is my rock to which I cling,
Where oldest sirens preen and sing,
Dressed in feathers I caressed
While pecking at my sunburnt flesh.

In succour I bloomed for an hour or so
But little considered my loosening soul
Would fill where prayers refuse to go,
In briny, speluncar fish-bone holes.

And though on sailing I depend
I always return to that place in the end,
The flock is feasting on my heaven
While my senses drain and deaden.

I convince myself, like many others,
That I’m alive and that’s enough;
My brothers below betray such comfort,
Empty-eyed beneath the bluff.

I woke, the awful crows transformed
In to an ambulance outside dorms;
A student there departs once more,
To a different, distant shore.