Perseid

Siren voices mingle tuneless with the echoes of the lost,

Drumming marches with their footprints, sad migrations off the coast,

In the drowning intertidal, a waning moon has no more sway

As the subtle waters rise and futile barriers drift away.

August stars have fallen, yet the heat wave lingers on,

A time for every season until all our time is gone,

Seeds within genetic swamps, sink sterile into the mud,

Undercut and emptied, in the running of the flood,

Still the sirens lull and promise, though the deep obscures the sky,

Til you cannot see the signs and warnings of the last stars shooting by

The rhythm is compulsive and it calls to you to join,

And the greedy eddies twist the lying music into coin,

Every flow must face an ebbing, every march must have its ides

And one day all singers answer to the ruler of the tides

Incandescent blaze of passage past the highest watermark

And when all the stars have fallen, will I find you in the dark?